Tom Cruise's Les Grossman from 'Tropic Thunder' might get a standalone movie, teases 'Mission: Impossible' maker Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning writer and director Christopher McQuarrie teased the possibility of a third Top Gun movie, in addition to a Days of Thunder sequel and a Les Grossman spin-off based on Tom Cruise's character in Tropic Thunder.

Unlike Top Gun: Maverick, which took 36 years to get to the screen, since the Tony Scott-directed original from 1986, the third film may not take that long for obvious reasons. McQuarrie, who was one of the co-writers of Maverick with Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer, told Josh Horowitz of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that the third film is not "harder to crack" because he already knows "what it is".

"It wasn't hard. I thought it would be. Ehren Kruger pitched something, and we had one conversation about it. The framework is there. The truth of the matter is none of these are hard to crack; it's the execution of it. As you start to execute it and as you start to interrogate it as to why these movies are made the way they are, you realise it's not the action — it's not even the level or intensity of or scope of or scale of the action. It's the emotion," said McQuarrie, who worked with Tom Cruise on 11 films in various capacities.

McQuarrie also revealed that he and Cruise have had conversations about a standalone project led by Les Grossman, the foul-mouthed movie studio boss played by Cruise in Ben Stiller's satirical comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), which co-starred Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, and Nick Nolte. "The conversations we've had about Les Grossman are so f----- funny. We are talking about it. We are having very serious conversations about it and how best to do it. It all comes down to what that character is."

The writer-director, who won an Oscar for his original screenplay of The Usual Suspects (1995), said the responsibilities of an actor playing the main character and a supporting character are completely different, adding that as a supporting character like Les Grossman or Frank Mackey (Cruise's character from Magnolia), an actor can afford to do or say dialogues that someone like Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible films cannot, implying that filmmakers have to think of projects with that perspective in mind.

As for the Days of Thunder sequel, McQuarrie is fully aware of its premise. "I looked at the response to Top Gun: Maverick, and immediately turned to Tom Cruise and said... Days of Thunder," McQuarrie told Josh while reminding viewers that the cultural impact of both films is not the same.

He recalled that it was while creating Mission: Impossible - Fallout that he realised the importance of emotion in big-scale storytelling. "With Fallout, I did not frame every shot until it was framed emotionally — emotion was injected into every frame." 

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