Christopher McQuarrie has a plot for Top Gun 3 "already in the bag".

The writer and producer of 2022's Top Gun: Maverick said it "wasn't hard" to come up with a story for a threequel to the hugely popular action-adventure franchise, which follows fighter pilot Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, played by Tom Cruise, 62.

Speaking to YouTuber Josh Horowitz on the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Josh asked Christopher, 56: "Is Top Gun 3 harder to crack in some ways than Top Gun: Maverick?"

To which he replied: "No, it's already in the bag."

Following up on the Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning director's answer, he then said: "You've cracked it?"

Confirming that an idea for Top Gun 3 was nailed, Christopher added: "Yeah, I already know what it is."

The filmmaker then went on to explain how F1 screenwriter Ehren Kruger, 52, suggested an idea for the upcoming third instalment to the Top Gun series, of which a release year has not been announced, and it ticked the "framework" boxes.

Christopher said: "It wasn't hard. I thought it would be, and that's a good place to go from is 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."

The original Top Gun movie — which shot Cruise to stardom in 1986 — follows Maverick as he is sent to the prestigious Fighter Weapons School in the wake of his dad's death, where he later battles through a "challenging training regimen", competes against rival Iceman (Val Kilmer) to clench the coveted Top Gun trophy, and strikes up a romance with civilian flight instructor Charlotte 'Charlie' Blackwood (Kelly McGillis).

Top Gun: Maverick saw Cruise reprise his alter ego 36 years later, where Maverick trained TOPGUN graduates for a "high-profile" mission as Maverick "battles his past demons".

But for Christopher, the key to a successful movie is emotion rather than action or intensity.

He said: "It's as you start to execute it, and as you start to interrogate it, as you start [to think] why these movies are made the way they are.

"It's not the action, it's not even the level of or intensity of or the scope and scale of the action [or] the engineering around the action, it's none of those things — it's the emotion."

Source: Bang