There are some sums of money that are difficult to comprehend. $40 million (£29m) is one of them – or 40,000,000 of them to be precise. That is reportedly what Tom Cruise is hoping to pocket if his potential next project, Top Gun 3, goes ahead. Variety initially reported that Cruise made $13 million (£9.7m) upfront for Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, but went on to earn a staggering estimated $100 million (£74.8m) on the backend. Understandably, that appears to have given the actor some bargaining power.

As a Hollywood mainstay since the early ’80s, Cruise is known for working with big figures. His most recent film, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth film in the franchise, reportedly had a budget of $400 million (£299m). It arrives in UK cinemas on 21 May and US cinemas on 23 May and sees Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny and Angela Bassett all reprise their roles from the previous films. In the final instalment, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team continue their search for the terrifying AI known as the Entity, which has infiltrated intelligence networks all over the globe – with the world’s governments and a mysterious ghost from Ethan’s past on their trail. Joined by new allies and armed with the means to shut the Entity down for good, Hunt is in a race against time to prevent the world as we know it from changing forever. Unsurprisingly, the lead actor is expected to make a large profit from the film.

Then there’s the fact Cruise, 62, is still known for doing all his own stunts. In Mission: Impossible, that includes clinging to a moving biplane mid-air, engaging in hand-to-hand combat scenes and shooting long underwater sequences. The same was true in Top Gun: Maverick, where he pulled off several high-flying, death-defying stunts with the help of an aerial stunt co-ordinator. Cruise proves time and time again that he is worth his salt.

While the next Top Gun film is yet to be given the green light, Cruise appears to be leveraging his past successes with Paramount. ‘The current status of the third Top Gun movie is that they are working on the script at the studio level,’ a source close to the actor tells Grazia. ‘When it’s ready for Tom’s thoughts and input, it will be presented to him, and hopefully he will agree to make the movie and put it on his schedule.’

They were quick to point out, however, that Cruise has not yet signed on to the project. ‘His salary is still going to be subject to negotiation if and when he does commit. Tom gave Paramount a discount on his salary for the last movie, but he made a killing on his profit participation because the movie was bigger than anybody imagined. It’s going to be a different deal structure for the third film, and Tom has more than proven himself worthy in this role of an upfront salary between $35-40 million.’

While the last Top Gun movie was a box office hit, it’s difficult to predict what films will galvanise global audiences these days. Cinema ticket sales fell 8.8% worldwide in 2024 from the previous year, marking the first annual drop since the Covid pandemic, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) said in Cannes.

There have long been cries from the film industry to stop judging a project’s success by box office numbers alone. ‘Since the ‘80s, there’s been a focus on numbers. It’s kind of repulsive,’ revered director Martin Scorsese once said. ‘The cost of a movie is one thing. Understand that a film costs a certain amount, they expect to at least get the amount back… The emphasis is now on numbers, cost, the opening weekend, how much it made in the USA, how much it made in England, how much it made in Asia, how much it made in the entire world, how many viewers it got.’

‘As a filmmaker, and as a person who can’t imagine life without cinema,’ he continued, ‘I always find it really insulting.’

Christopher Nolan, the Oscar-winning director behind Oppenheimer, Interstellar and Inception, echoed this sentiment. Speaking to the Associated Press he once said, ‘I know for myself the life of the movie is a much longer proposition in that, you look at other people’s films and indeed your own films in decades, not in weekends.’

‘I think the science fiction genre is the one where the long view is everything. People revisit. They value science fiction in a very long-term way,’ he added. ‘The original Blade Runner, nobody paid any attention to it on release, it was famously a flop. Then over time, people like myself [found it]. I think I was 13 when I first saw a VHS tape.’

In recent years the figures back this idea up. Robbie Williams’ recent biopic, where he is played rather idiosyncratically by a CGI chimp, was initially written off as a financial box office flop. It was produced independently for roughly $110 million (£822m) and acquired by Paramount for $25 million (£18.7m). It grossed a disappointing $22.5 million (£16.8m) worldwide but is widely regarded as a sleeper hit. Better Man might be ‘dismal’ in term of numbers, but it is critically acclaimed, whether that makes it ‘a success’ is up for interpretation.

Other films to ‘flop’ in terms of sales include Mad Max: Furiosa, The Fall Guy, and perhaps surprisingly, Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. The latter grossed $156 million (£116m) worldwide on a $200 million (£149m) budget. While that’s still an exceptional amount of money, especially for a film than runs for three and a half hours, it was by no means a profitable success.

Barbie, on the other hand, grossed $1.45 billion in the box office, making it the highest-grossing film of 2023. However, it did not receive the same level of support from critics, with its star Margot Robbie and its director Greta Gerwig debatably ‘snubbed’ by the Academy when awards season rolled around.

All of which goes to prove there is not a direct, nor simple, correlation between box office profit and a film being considered a long-term success. Nevertheless, it’s not difficult to understand why, following the success of the 2022 sequel, Paramount are keen to invest in a third Top Gun film, or why they want Cruise to return as the lead actor. ‘The studio wants to lock in Tom before the fall and ideally shoot the movie next spring, but that’s an optimistic timeline,’ the insider adds. Ultimately, though, he holds the trump card. ‘Just like everyone else, Tom knows there isn’t really a Top Gun franchise without him. If he likes the script and gets the money he deserves, this movie could be ready for May 2027.’

Cruise has a knack for making himself the face of lucrative film franchises, which no doubt puts him in a solid bargaining position. If he does enter negotiations with Paramount, he will be fresh off the press run for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning too, which is one of the most expensive films ever made. The film is likely to be a hit with long-term fans of the franchise, but whatever happens Cruise stands to make another fortune.

Reflecting on the epic franchise at the New York premiere, Cruise said, ‘I did the best you can, and it’s representing all the efforts of everyone involved at that particular moment,’ he says. ‘I looked at it and I really see what it takes to make these movies and what I’ve learned about storytelling [in] this particular genre.’

It’s clear that Cruise and Paramount are banking on both new and legacy fans showing up to the cinema in their droves. It’s worked every time before and would likely happen again if Top Gun 3 is given the go ahead. Does that make Cruise’s fee hike worth it? Or could profit alone make it worth his time? We’ll leave it to Cruise’s accountants to decide.