Christopher McQuarrie Says the Plot of ‘Top Gun 3’ Is ‘Already In the Bag’: ‘It Wasn’t Hard’

“Top Gun 3” may be closer to release than you think.

In a recent conversation on Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote and produced “Top Gun: Maverick,” said he already has the story nailed down for “Top Gun 3.”

When asked if “Top Gun 3” was “harder to crack” than “Top Gun: Maverick,” McQuarrie said, “No, it’s already in the bag.”

“It wasn’t hard,” McQuarrie said. “I thought it would be, and that’s a good place to go from as you walk into the room going, ‘Come on, what are we going to do?’ And Ehren Kruger pitched something and I went, ‘Mhm actually,’ and we had one conversation about it and the framework is there. So, no, it’s not hard to crack. The truth of the matter is, none of these are hard to crack.”

“It’s as you start to execute it, and as you start to interrogate it, as you start why these movies are made the way they are,” he added. “It’s not the action, it’s not even the level of or intensity of or the scope and scale of the action the engineering around the action, it’s none of those things — it’s the emotion.”

This isn’t the first time the “Top Gun” threequel has been teased by franchise talent. Earlier in May, Tom Cruise said he is actively working on not only “Top Gun 3,” but also a sequel to his 1990 racing thriller “Days of Thunder.”

“Yeah, we’re thinking and talking about many different stories and what could we do and what’s possible,” Cruise said. “It took me 35 years to figure out ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, so all of these things we’re working on, we’re discussing ‘Days of Thunder’ and ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’