F1 director teases Top Gun 3 details, reveals Tom Cruise’s future in the franchise: ‘There’s one last ride’

After sending Tom Cruise, Glen Powell, and Miles Teller sky-high in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), director Joseph Kosinski is gearing up for more high-speed action, but this time, it’s on the ground with Formula One. While Kosinski’s upcoming F1 film is already generating major buzz post-release, the director just dropped some juicy tidbits about what’s next for Top Gun fans. 

In a new interview with GQ, Kosinski confirmed that Top Gun 3 is very much in development, and it promises to go deeper than ever before. “I think we’ve found a way to do it,” he said. “Not only in the scale of what we’re proposing, but the idea itself of the story we’re telling. We’re thinking much bigger… it’s a really existential crisis that Maverick has in this.” Without revealing too much, Kosinski teased that this next instalment won’t just be about aerial stunts or adrenaline-pumping flight scenes. “It’s an existential question that Maverick has to deal with, that would make Maverick feel small, I think, as a movie, compared to what we’re talking about.”

And while many assumed Top Gun: Maverick was a baton-passing moment, Kosinski insists there’s more story left for Cruise’s iconic character. “Yeah, there’s still more story to tell for him. There’s one last ride. So we’re working on it now,” he said, confirming that F1 screenwriter Ehren Kruger is penning the script.

But that’s not all Kosinski is dreaming up. When asked if he’d like to unite Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in one movie again, the director didn’t miss a beat. “Right now, it’d be Cole Trickle [Cruise’s 1990 character from Days of Thunder]. We find out that he and Sonny Hayes [Pitt’s character in F1] have a past. They were rivals at some point, maybe crossed paths…” Kosinski even referenced an old rumour8 about a go-kart battle between Cruise and Pitt on the Interview with the Vampire set, before grinning: “Who wouldn’t pay to see those two go head-to-head on the track?”