Huge new Top Gun 3 details revealed as Tom Cruise faces 'existential crisis'

Hollywood studio chiefs are ready to offer Tom Cruise the biggest payday in Hollywood history to roar back on screen in Top Gun 3 as early as next year. Bosses at Paramount - bought this month in a £6billion deal with Skydance Media - are scrambling to get the 63-year-old back in the pilot's seat as Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.

Senior sources have confirmed Cruise is expected to "easily eclipse" the £75million he earned for returning to the role in 2022 for Top Gun: Maverick. It came 36 years after the 1986 original in which starred alongside Kelly McGillis. New Paramount co-chair Dana Goldberg declared last week: "Top Gun 3 is a massive priority for us."

Cruise was paid less than £10million up front for the first sequel, the London premiere of which saw him accompany the Prince and Princess of Wales. But he scored a massive final salary with a "back end" deal based on a percentage of profits.

A well-placed insider told us: "Tom will get a very similar deal again, but this time round his percentage of the profits is certain to be increased with a race against the clock to start filming for a 2026 release date."

Screenwriters are working on a plot that will see Maverick in a "war of the future" as he and his fellow fighter aces face an "existential crisis" posed by modern drone warfare.

Cruise, who now lives mainly in London and has been dating Cuban-born actress Ana de Armas, 37, is also planning to shoot the first ever movie in space in an untitled project with Elon Musk's SpaceX company.