Top Gun 3 Story Is “Already in the Bag,” Says Christopher McQuarrie

Top Gun: Maverick writer and producer Christopher McQuarrie has revealed the “framework” for the Top Gun 3 story has been set, describing its status as “already in the bag.”

“I already know what [the story] is,” the Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning director said about cracking the script on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It wasn’t hard. I thought it would be, and that’s a good place to go from, is you walk into the room going, ‘Come on, what are we going to do?’ [Co-writer] Ehren Kruger pitched something, and I went, ‘Mhm, actually,’ and we had one conversation about it, and the framework is there.  So, no, it’s not hard to crack. The truth of the matter is, none of these are hard to crack.”

He continued, “It’s as you start to execute it, and as you start to interrogate it, as you start [to think] why these movies are made the way they are: It’s not the action, it’s not even the level of or intensity of or the scope and scale of the action [or] the engineering around the action, it’s none of those things — it’s the emotion.”

In January 2024, Top Gun 3 was reported to be in development, with Tom Cruise expected to reunite with Top Gun: Maverick co-stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell. Maverick director Joseph Kosinski was also reported to be on board as a producer and potential director.