‘Top Gun 3’ Is a Priority for New Paramount Owners!!

When Skydance officially became the powers-that-be at Paramount last Thursday, the new leadership absolutely wasted zero time in sending a clear message to Hollywood: the scaled-back Paramount of recent years is gone. Hours after the merger closed, co-Chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg made their first big move, snapping up the hot Timothée Chalamet–James Mangold package High Side in a pretty fierce bidding war, and that aggressive power play has set the tone for this new Paramount 2.0 which is determined to massively expand its theatrical slate as well as attempt to become the premium streaming brand in the world.

For Top Gun fans, that’s damn fine news. Tom Cruise’s return to the cockpit has been up in the air (get it?) since Top Gun: Maverick smashed box office records in 2022, becoming Paramount’s highest-grossing film of all time with $1.49 billion worldwide, and Cruise’s highest-grossing movie ever. Ehren Kruger has been working on a script for Top Gun 3 since 2023, but Cruise’s Mission: Impossible commitments held things up, because he wanted to find new ways to barely avoid death. Now, with those films wrapped and Cruise looking for his next project, insiders say the Skydance-owned Paramount is eager to get him back in the danger zone.

Skydance founder David Ellison, who co-financed Maverick, has a vested interest in seeing the trilogy completed. The merger also changes the math: where Paramount once relied on co-financing partners for its biggest blockbusters, the new plan is to keep all the upside on tentpoles like Top Gun and Star Trek, reserving shared financing for mid-budget risks.

AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron, speaking on an earnings call this week, called the deal a win for moviegoers. “It appears to us that Skydance is cash rich, and it would be our expectation that Skydance will be releasing more movies coming out of Paramount than Paramount has been releasing in recent years,” he said. Greenstein has already set a target of 15 films a year, climbing to 20 in the near future — a big jump from Paramount’s recent 11-to-14-film average.

What Paramount Movies Are Coming Out?

That means Cruise’s next high-speed flyby could happen sooner than expected. And Top Gun 3 won’t be alone in fueling the new Paramount’s tentpole strategy. Other high-profile projects in the pipeline include two separate Star Trek films — one introducing new characters under Andor director Toby Haynes, and another bringing back the classic crew with J.J. Abrams producing — as well as the next Transformers, A Quiet Place Part III (July 9, 2027), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 2 (Sept. 17, 2027).

There’s also a crop of buzzy originals and in-development Skydance projects now folded into Paramount’s slate, including Brandon Sklenar’s The Rescue, Lee Isaac Chung’s The Traveler, and a Matthew McConaughey–led Mike Hammer film written by Nic Pizzolatto. But make no mistake, Top Gun 3 is one of the crown jewels.