After years in development, Top Gun 3 is still taxiing toward takeoff, as producer Jerry Bruckheimer shares an encouraging update on the progress of the script.

After Top Gun: Maverick was a massive critical and commercial success that made nearly $1.5 billion at the box office and received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Top Gun 3 is in development with Christopher McQuarrie and Ehren Kruger returning to co-write the script for the threequel.

Now, during an interview with Entertainment Tonight, producer Jerry Bruckheimer was asked if Top Gun 3 or Pirates of the Caribbean 6 will come first, and he revealed that they are expecting the script to be finished shortly. Read his full comments below:

I think it’s a horse race between the two of them, so we’ll see. Right now, Top Gun is a hair ahead, but that’s it. We’re expecting a script shortly.

During the same interview, Bruckheimer also addressed the rumors that Jack Sparrow’s son will be at the center of the story in Pirates of the Caribbean 6, saying, “They’re close on part of it. That’s all I’ll tell ya.”

Top Gun 3 is expected to feature the return of Tom Cruise as Maverick, Miles Teller as Rooster, and Glen Powell as Hangman. The return of other cast members, however, remains uncertain. Joseph Kosinski is attached to direct, though he’s not officially confirmed to be returning behind the camera.

During an interview, Kosinski teased Top Gun 3‘s story, saying that it will follow Maverick as he experiences an “existential crisis” and seemingly confirmed that it will be the character’s final outing:

I think we’ve found a way to do it, 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 than… It’s a really existential crisis that Maverick has in this, and it’s much bigger than himself. It actually… I’m trying to describe it without giving anything away. [Laughs.] 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.

Yeah, there’s still more story to tell for him. There’s one last ride. So we’re working on it now. Ehren Kruger, who wrote F1, is writing the script. Like all things, it takes a while to work things out, and we’ll only do it if we feel like we’ve got a strong enough story.

After Top Gun: Maverick was a massive success, director Joseph Kosinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and screenwriter Ehren Kruger reunited for F1: The Movie in 2025, another big box office hit that received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

Given the current timeline, Top Gun 3 likely won’t be released until 2028 at the earliest.