Top Gun 3 Just Got An Exciting Update From Its Screenwriter

According to Steven Spielberg, "Top Gun: Maverick" saved the movies. The long awaited follow up to the late, great Tony Scott's 1986 era-defining blockbuster "Top Gun" survived the COVID pandemic to release in 2022 and blew a hole in the box office, becoming one of the top grossing movies in U.S. box office history.

Tom Cruise's trip back to the danger zone defied the odds and became the rare legacy sequel to outdo the original, but the question remains if Cruise will get back into the cockpit for "Top Gun 3." Previously, "Maverick" co-star Miles Teller made it clear he'd love to return for another flight if Cruise was up for it, while producer Jerry Bruckheimer joked that it would all depend on Cruise surviving the latest death defying stunts of the "Mission: Impossible" movies.

With "Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning" now completed and Cruise very much still alive after plunging into the arctic depths and straddling a biplane over South Africa, does that mean "Top Gun 3" has the greenlight to launch? Christopher McQuarrie, whose longtime partnership with Cruise has resulted in him writing and directing the last four "Mission: Impossible" films and co-writing "Top Gun: Maverick," has now given us an exciting update.

"Top Gun: Maverick" director Joseph Kosinski previously said the most important element for moving forward with another sequel was answering the question: "Is there another story that is compelling enough that we need to go back?" But according to Christopher McQuarrie, that's actually the easy part.

In an interview with the podcast "Happy Sad Confused with Josh Horowitz," McQuarrie bluntly answered that yes, he and the sequel's other writers have already figured out what "Top Gun 3" should be about:

"It's already in the bag. I already know what it is. [...] I thought it would be [hard]. [...] ['Top Gun: Maverick' screenwriter] Ehren Kruger pitched something and I said, 'Hmmm, actually,' and we had one conversation about it and the framework is there. So, no, it's not hard to crack."

While that may make it sound like "Top Gun 3" is just about to take flight, McQuarrie cautioned that writing the story is actually the easy part. The real heart of what makes a film like "Top Gun: Maverick" successful, and what "Top Gun 3" needs to replicate, is something even more fundamental:

"The truth of the matter is none of these are hard to crack. It's as you start to execute it and as you start to interrogate it. It's not the action. It's not the level of, or the intensity of, or the scope and scale of the action. [...] it's none of those things. It's the emotion."

For now, it's unclear how far McQuarrie, Tom Cruise, and their collaborators have gotten when it comes to interrogating the emotional backbone of "Top Gun 3." By the sound of it, though, McQuarrie and company are hard at work ironing things out. Also undecided is who will direct the film. When asked whether Kosinski will return or if McQuarrie himself will step into the pilot's seat, the latter said he has "given it absolutely no thought" before joking, "I have done a lot of research into how to make a Tony Scott movie."

It seems only time will tell if we'll get to see McQuarrie's best Tony Scott impression. Until then, we'll just have to get back on the highway to the danger zone by rewatching "Top Gun: Maverick" for the 10th time.