‘Top Gun’ Flies High Again With a Major Streaming Comeback

It's not been the best couple of months for Tom Cruise. For the first time since 2017's American Made, Cruise was headlining a non-franchise movie, with his involvement seemingly certain to help make the satirical black comedy Digger a hit. Alas, some scathing early reviews from critics left Alejandro G. Iñárritu's first English-language film since his 2015 hit The Revenant struggling for box office relevance. Against a reported $125 million budget, this bold swing-and-a-miss returned less than $50 million worldwide.

Cruise's name is often associated with the biggest box office hits of any year. Case in point, his 2022 legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick proved so popular in theaters that it is often cited as the film that saved cinema following the COVID-19 pandemic. Against a reported budget of $177 million, the movie returned an eye-watering $1.45 billion worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time. The movie was written by Christopher McQuarrie, who directed Cruise in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning last year, and was directed by F1's Joseph Kosinski.

This combination of powerhouse blockbuster names, plus the on-screen involvement of Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, and Glen Powell, helped make Top Gun: Maverick unstoppable at the box office. Four years later, the film is still just as popular. At the time of writing, Top Gun: Maverick is one of the ten most-watched movies on Paramount+ in the world. In fact, it ranks as the fourth-most-watched on the streamer, behind only Diablo, Passenger, and the latest installment in the Scary Movie franchise.

'Top Gun 3' Is Happening

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It's early days in the development process, but we do know that a third Top Gun movie has been confirmed. The announcement was made at CinemaCon earlier this year, with Cruise crucially confirmed to be back in the pilot's seat for Paramount's threequel, and Teller and Powell heavily rumored to return. Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who had an impact on the first two installments, will reportedly work alongside McQuarrie to bring Top Gun 3 to life, although it's likely not going to be for a while until we get a concrete update on proceedings.