As of this April, “Top Gun 3” is officially a “go” at Paramount, with Tom Cruise returning to star as Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. But since the CinemaCon announcement, there have been no updates on the blockbuster. That is, until now, when Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” co-star Glen Powell spoke about the project during a new interview with Esquire.

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So what did Powell have to say? In a phrase, nothing too definitive. “I probably know as much as you do,” he joked to Esquire, before divulging that he speaks to Cruise regularly about “Top Gun 3” and otherwise. “I know the general brushstrokes of a story,” Powell confirmed, but “I haven’t read anything.” The actor did, however, offer a specific ultimatum about the film: “Tom’s not going to do it unless he thinks it can beat “Maverick.”” In other words, unless it feels like “Top Gun 3” will make over $1.503 billion, it won’t be high on Cruise’s priority list.

That caveat sounds a little disingenuous coming just days after Cruise stated, in the wake of the disastrous box-office debut for “Digger,” that he doesn’t consider “opening weekend” when choosing what films to make. In fact, Cruise clearly does consider a project’s financial prospects before moving ahead with them. That’s why Universal canned their “Dark Universe” plans after “The Mummy” tanked in theaters in 2017, and why he’s only done safe bets like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible” films since then. It’s also very likely why Cruise signed on for a “Day Of Thunder” sequel before “Digger” started its marketing campaign: maybe the actor knew the projections for Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s film weren’t great, and he needed a safe success to fall back on. So much as “Days Of Thunder” was a success; it didn’t exactly set the box office on fire back in 1990.

But “Top Gun: Maverick” did set movie theaters ablaze four years ago when it came out, becoming Paramount’s highest-grossing film ever and the second-highest-grossing film of 2022, behind only James Cameron’s juggernaut “Avatar: The Way of Water.” After the worst opening weekend of his career in “Digger,” and relatively middling debuts for the past two “M:I” films, Cruise no doubt wants to make a winner, and “Top Gun 3” most assuredly will be that. But will it surpass the mega-success of “Maverick”? Well, that’s a tall order. “Hopefully, I’m not the age of Maverick in “Maverick” by the time I make it,” quipped Powell to Esquire. Given the likely urgency Cruise feels for a bounce-back after “Digger,” Powell should still be under 40 before “Top Gun 3” enter production.

Still, from what Powell says, it doesn’t sound like the sequel is anywhere close to having a shooting date scheduled. And other recent comments from his “Maverick” co-star Monica Barbaro, director Joseph Kosinski, and “Top Gun 3” co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, echo that sentiment. Barbaro stated that “we’re not quite at the point where we know definitively what’s happening” with the sequel in August. Meanwhile, McQuarrie confirmed last year that the story for the film was “already in the bag,” while Kosinski teased it will center on an “existential crisis” for Cruise’s Mitchell. That’s intriguing enough, but an official release date, much less anything else, hasn’t been confirmed.

A release date for “Top Gun 3” should be revealed once Cruise commits to it, though, and the likelihood of that feels high after “Digger.” We know “Days Of Thunder 2” is the actor’s next project, but after that, it’s wide open, and a surefire box office winner like “Top Gun 3” no doubt looks appealing for Cruise right now. Even if it doesn’t match the stupendously high numbers of “Maverick,” that sequel will almost certainly soar like Pete Mitchell in an F-14.