Now that a second Top Gun movie is happening, Jay Ellis, who played Maverick in the first, recently shared whether he’ll be available to reprise his role. Tom Cruise is already set to return for the sequel.
At the premiere of his new show, Not Suitable for Work, Ellis told Entertainment Weekly he’s eager to return for another Top Gun movie. “I’d happily make time for it,” he said with a smile, explaining that they’re making progress. “There’s a script, it’s been announced, and everyone at Paramount, including Tom [Cruise] and [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer, is really enthusiastic about it.”
Jay Ellis Praises Top Gun 3‘s Creative Team Ahead of Possible Return
Monica Ellis played Lieutenant Reuben “Payback” Fitch, a pilot in Top Gun: Maverick, alongside Tom Cruise’s character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The film brought back Cruise and featured a new generation of Top Gun graduates being trained. While details about the next installment are still secret, Ellis has spoken highly of the filmmakers’ vision.
Working with a team like that – Tom, Jerry, Christopher McQuarrie, and Joe Kosinski – was incredible. They’re all so experienced and talented. Our main goal was to make this movie even better than the last one, and they really set the bar high for achieving that.
According to Ellis, the long wait for the Top Gun sequel, Maverick, was partly because they wanted to surpass the original. He explained, “That’s why Tom took so long to return and make Maverick – he was determined to push filmmaking boundaries.” They hope to achieve the same level of innovation with any future installments when the time is right.
Waiting over three decades to make a sequel to Top Gun proved to be a great move for Maverick, which came out in 2022. Critics generally loved the film, with many considering it superior to the original, and it received six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. The movie was a massive commercial success, earning over $1.5 billion globally and becoming both the second-highest-grossing film of the year and Tom Cruise’s most successful movie to date. Any follow-up will have a lot to live up to.
Top Gun 3 Will be ‘Exciting’ and ‘Ambitious’, Screenwriter Says
While it will probably be a while before fans can see Top Gun 3, the people making the movie are already starting to generate excitement. Writer Christopher McQuarrie has said the story was locked in as early as May 2025, stating, “It’s already in the bag.”
He explained it was about finding a fresh idea – a real challenge that immediately grabbed his attention and felt impossible to ignore. He was particularly excited by how ambitious the idea was.
Director Joseph Kosinski explained that the project was a large-scale concept he’d been developing for nearly a year, collaborating with contacts at the Navy and Lockheed Martin.
More details about Top Gun 3 are expected to emerge as the film enters production.
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2026-06-01 14:06