Three years after flying into the Cannes Film Festival with “Top Gun: Maverick,” Tom Cruise is returning to the Croisette with “Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning.”

Organizers of the French festival announced Tuesday that “Final Reckoning,” will screen out of competition at the 78th edition Cannes on May 14, ahead of the film’s May 23 release in theaters. Cruise, writer- director Christopher McQuarrie and the cast will attend the screening at the Palais des Festivals.

It will be Cruise’s third time with a film in Cannes, but his first trip back after the eventful 2022 launch of “Top Gun: Maverick.” Cruise was then given an honorary Palme d’Or.

The lineup for this year’s edition of Cannes, running May 13 to 24, will be unveiled Thursday in Paris. On Monday, the festival announced that Robert De Niro will receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the opening ceremony.

Writers honored by Authors Guild: Robert Caro, Salman Rushdie and Sandra Cisneros were honored Monday at an Authors Guild dinner gala that celebrated the written word and its vital role in the preservation of democracy.

“The world we live in is a house on fire, and people we love are burning,” said Cisneros, the fiction writer, poet and pacifist who was presented the Baldacci Award for Literary Activism.

Caro, the Pulitzer Prize- winning historian, is this year’s winner of the Preston Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community, and Rushdie, the novelist and critic of censorship, received the Champion of Writers Award for his “steadfast commitment to free expression.”

Caro, who accepted his award via a recorded video, called the Guild’s work as “urgent” as ever and warned that authors can’t fight for their causes alone. “To receive this award from the community that has give me so much moves me deeply,” he said.

Rushdie said that “the sphere of culture is under attack as never before” in his lifetime. “All segments of the story of America are in the process of being suppressed and perhaps even erased,” he said. “Authors are the keepers of that story.”

Actor Arndt dies: Denis Arndt — a character actor and favorite of writer and producer David E. Kelley, getting cast in “L.A. Law,” “Picket Fences” and “Chicago Hope,” and later earning a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut at age 77 in a play about mismatched lovers — has died. He was 86.

Arndt died in Ashland, Oregon, his family announced in an obituary published March 26.

Arndt was a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot who later turned to acting. His career began in the mid-1980s with roles on the TV shows “Crime Story” and “Wiseguy.”

In addition to playing lawyer Franklin Dell on “Picket Fences,” Arndt had roles on Kelley’s shows “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice,” “Boston Public” and “Boston Legal.”

April 9 birthdays: Actor Michael Learned is 86. Actor Dennis Quaid is 71. Keyboardist Dave Innis is 66. Actor Cynthia Nixon is 59. TV personality Sunny Anderson is 50. Singer Gerard Way is 48. Actor Charlie Hunnam is 45. Actor Leighton Meester is 39. Actor Kristen Stewart is 35. Actor Elle Fanning is 27. Musician Lil Nas X is 26.