Top Gun 3 is taking off as Tom Cruise plans a bunch more movies

The combined power of Barbie And Oppenheimer innovated the film industry with a kind of zeitgeist for big-screen entertainment that was so palpable it was… a little scary. “Barbenheimer” felt like a once-in-a-generation moment – ​​so how would the movie studios continue to perform? In the wake of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that all but halted momentum as studio executives dithered over details and their own existential content crisis, the answer seems to come from 2022 rather than 2023: Tom Cruise.

After flirting with franchise work with Universal’s Dark Universe and doing fine work with the Jack Reacher series (although he’s now been surpassed by Alan Ritchson’s version on Prime Video), Cruise finally found his footing in the modern franchise-hungry Hollywood, just before the COVID-19 pandemic movies in 2020. Mission: Impossible – Fallout helped Cruise’s 20-year spy franchise reach new heights in 2018, and then its long-awaited revival Top Gun: Maverick finally in theaters, the sequel, as Steven Spielberg would later glorify: saved movies. While Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning part one didn’t reach the same heights in 2023, but it still cemented Cruise as a bona fide movie star in a sea of ​​superhero wannabes. And as the Marvel mojo fades, Cruise — who famously turned down the role of Iron Man in the 1990s — is having the last laugh. Right now everyone wants a piece of him.

On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Pictures announced it had entered into a “strategic partnership” with Cruise, who would base himself on Warner’s Los Angeles lot to develop original and franchise-friendly projects in which he could star. No films have been announced as part of the pact, which is rarely non-exclusive and does not include first-look provisions. But Cruise is no stranger to WB; the star last worked with the studio in 2014 Edge of tomorrowwho has been the talk of sequels for years, and who arguably did his best work as an actor under the banner in films like Magnolia, Eyes wide closedAnd interview with the vampire. Lestat legacy sequel? The Last Last Samurai? Rock of Ages: now with more leather? The possibilities are endless.

“We are thrilled to be working with Tom, an absolute legend in the motion picture industry,” said Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairmen and CEOs of Warner Bros.’s motion picture group, in a public joint statement. “Our vision from day one was to rebuild this iconic studio to the heights of its glory days, and when we first sat down with David Zaslav to talk about joining the Warner Bros. Discovery team, he told us, “We’re on a mission to take Warner Bros. – we have the best assets, storytelling IP and talent in the industry – and we need to bring Tom Cruise back to Warner Bros!’ Today that becomes reality and we are one step closer to realizing our ambition.”

WB isn’t the only studio betting on what it sees as a revival of the movie star moment – ​​and Cruise is one of the few stars still standing. It was announced on Friday that Paramount was in active development with the actor on Top gun 3of Independent thinking person writer Ehren Kruger wrote back the screenplay and director Joseph Kosinski certainly hit the mark as producer. The plan, as reported by Deadlinewould be to bring back the 2014 established team Independent thinking person, with Cruise in the cockpit and co-stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell back for banter. If it happens, I won’t eat a shoe.

Both the Warner Bros. and Paramount announcements came with a reminder that Cruise still has a huge movie set up on a third studio, Universal Pictures. The currently untitled space thriller will be directed by Edge of tomorrow‘s Doug Liman and produced with the help of NASA, which will help Cruise become the first actor to do an actual spacewalk for a feature film. The reported price tag: $200 million.

It’s unclear what lessons the studios learned from the one-two punch of Barbie And Oppenheimer. Clearly there’s an audience for films that aren’t run-and-gun fantasies starring older guys who “like the rush.” Perhaps a thoughtful Bratz reboot and a full-scale Leonardo da Vinci biopic will emerge in the coming years. But for now, as studios race to find meaning in a viewing world fragmented by streaming services, emptied by weekly superhero releases, and completely disrupted by the fluff of TikTok, Cruise still has the shine. That translates into betting billions on the star’s adrenaline-pumping vision of cinema.

So if the answer to theatrical entertainment is once again movie stars, will the studios produce new ones too? The coup d’état of Top gun 3 Cruise might be able to lock in one more ride before he reaches the mandatory retirement age for USAF fighter pilots, but for all the studio execs listening: Glen Powell is there. Powell, quietly carrying the Sony rom-com Everyone but you to success after the holidays and has the famous comedy thriller Richard Linklater Touch man awaiting release later this year, is in charge, but after its escape in Top Gun: Maverick, rumors swirled that he could play Booster Gold in a DC movie for James Gunn. Sure, it’s a living, but from the outside it seems like the only thing stopping Powell from becoming the Next Tom Cruise… is a studio fascination with Tom Cruise.

Cruise will certainly deliver and pump out thrilling rides until his legs give out, but the bigger question swirling around these mega deals: who gets to take over?