Top Gun 3 producer Jerry Bruckheimer says there have been “preliminary” conversations with Tom Cruise about the sequel.

Top Gun fans waited over thirty years for Top Gun: Maverick, but the wait was well worth it. The film was an overwhelming success, earning rave reviews and grossing $1.4 billion worldwide. Considering those box-office bucks, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Paramount is developing Top Gun 3 with Tom Cruise expected to reprise his role as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell alongside Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller) and Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin (Glen Powell).

Although we likely won’t have to wait as long as we did for Maverick, those involved with the threequel aren’t about to rush the project. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer gave a Top Gun 3 update to Games Radar, saying that he’s had “preliminary” conversations with Tom Cruise, but “we’re not there yet. [There’s] ways to go.“

Two months ago, Bruckheimer said they had a “wonderful story idea” for Top Gun 3. “It will be Tom Cruise (back in the lead). Tom is amazing. We spent time with him. We have a story. Joe Kosinski had a wonderful story idea for it, and he (Tom Cruise) said I really like that, so we’re developing it,” Bruckheimer said. “But you never know when it’s going to get made because Tom is so busy. He’s doing Mission: Impossible right now, he’s got a picture after it. Hopefully, we’ll get a screenplay that he loves, and we’ll be back in the air again.“

Shortly after the Top Gun 3 announcement in January, Glen Powell teased that some fun stuff would be announced soon, but here we are, nearly five months later, and there haven’t been any significant developments or announcements. “There is going to be some fun stuff being announced soon…but it was confidential to me,” Powell said. “I talk to [Joseph] Kosinski, Cruise and Jerry [Bruckheimer] all the time. There is stuff happening and it sounds very exciting. I don’t know when I’ll be going back…I’m sure there is a jet waiting for me sometime in the future.“

It’s also possible that Top Gun 3 might not even happen. I can’t imagine Cruise launching into another sequel if he didn’t believe in it; plus, it will be hard to beat Maverick.