Fortunately, Cruise has been open to cracking another sequel to the 1986 film as soon as possible, as are the cast of young pilots that his upstart aviator trains in Maverick. “We’ve all been talking about the possibility of this from the moment we started filming our movie,” Monica Barbaro, who plays Natasha “Phoenix” Trace, told Inverse in 2024. This update is certainly promising, but it may still be a few years before Top Gun 3 is ready to fly. Cruise and McQuarrie are working are multiple projects, including a potential sequel to Days of Thunder, and there’s no telling which will get the green light first. Ideally, though, we won’t have to wait too much longer to see Cruise’s Maverick reunite with his Top Gun recruits.