Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures Top Gun 3 is definitely happening, but the sequel may have a hard time achieving the same success that Top Gun: Maverick did. Last week at CinemaCon, Paramount Pictures announced that Top Gun 3 with Tom Cruise is officially happening. It was already known that the movie is being developed; however, the CinemaCon panel confirmed that the movie is definitely going to be made.
While this gives fans of Cruise and the Top Gun franchise much to be excited about, there is some potentially unfortunate news. According to a new update from Puck, the producers of Top Gun 3 are “preparing for the likelihood” that Joseph Kosinski will not return to direct. This is seemingly because Kosinski, who helmed Top Gun: Maverick, already has plans to shoot two movies in the near future: a U.F.O. thriller and the highly anticipated Miami Vice reboot.
Why might Top Gun 3 be in trouble after the new update? Kosinski potentially not being involved with Top Gun 3 isn’t automatically a death warrant for the movie; after all, there are very few people out there who went to see Top Gun: Maverick solely because of Kosinski’s involvement. There are many, many talented directors working in Hollywood who can absolutely knock the movie out of the park if given the opportunity.
Having said all that, the success that Top Gun: Maverick achieved can’t be ignored. It nearly made $1.5 billion at the box office and was adored by critics and audience members alike, to the point where it got a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Recapturing that lightning in a bottle is easier said than done.
Top Gun: Maverick had the benefit of being a huge post-pandemic movie that brought people back to the theaters, it had incredible word-of-mouth, and it turned a well-liked but dormant film from 1986 into a franchise. Top Gun 3 could have good word-of-mouth, but it’s hard to know what the vision for the movie is, at this point, if all we know is that it’ll have a new director. Lord willing, this movie will not be coming out after another pandemic.
And the Top Gun franchise has now been reinvigorated. Think of the difference between the hype for Avatar: Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash as an example of that last point. Not that Avatar: Fire and Ash was in any way a box office bomb, but it made almost $1 billion less than Way of Water did.
And those are the Avatar movies; films that kept the same director (and a very well-known, beloved name) on for all three of them. Top Gun 3 could very well have all the same magic that Top Gun: Maverick does. But it’s going to be a rough highway through the danger zone to navigate in order to get it to those same heights.