Top Gun: Maverick, the biggest hit in Tom Cruise’s career, is soaring up the charts of the highest-grossing films ever.
By the weekend, it had clocked up $662m in US ticket sales, beating Titanic into eighth place. As both films are by Paramount, Top Gun: Maverick is now also the studio’s best-performing domestic release.
Yet James Cameron’s iceberg epic retains the lead when international box office is factored in, with $1.5bn internationally and $2.2bn globally.
The ratios for Top Gun, directed by Joseph Kosinski, are strikingly different, with similar tickets sales – $690m worth – outside the US as inside. The film has not yet opened in China or Russia, traditionally major territories for those blockbusters approved for release. Its total to date is $1.3bn.
The long tail of Top Gun’s success this summer means it is now poised to overtake Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel’s superhero hit, which took $678m in the US.
The final five in the US list are Black Panther ($700m), Avatar ($760m), Spider-Man: No Way Home ($804m), Avengers: Endgame ($858m) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936m).
Top Gun: Maverick, a very belated sequel to Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986), opened in May and remained in the box office top five for nearly three months. It is the first film for Cruise, 60, to pass $100m over a single weekend and his first to top $1bn globally.
The film revisits Cruise’s ace fighter pilot, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell 36 years after the events of the first film and sees him coaching a new elite squad of aviators including the son, played by Miles Teller, of his former wingman, Goose.
Jon Hamm plays an admiral who disapproves of Mavericks’s unusual methods, while Jennifer Connelly is his love interest. Val Kilmer returns from the first film for a touching cameo as Maverick’s one-time nemesis, Iceman.
The success of the Top Gun sequel has been ascribed to a number of factors including warm reviews, remarkable word-of-mouth and a continued global fascination with Cruise.
Its spring release date, coinciding with Memorial Day in the US, appears to have offered a propitious launch – and the relative paucity of other tentpole offerings for exhibitors to programme against it has meant it has remained in many cinemas throughout the summer.
Most of the major blockbusters were released before the start of the summer holidays in the US and UK, including The Batman (March), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (May) and Jurassic World Dominion (June). Both Minions: The Rise of Gru and Thor: Love and Thunder came out in early July, leaving many multiplexes struggling to supply fresh crowd-pleasers.
Yet many of the records set by Top Gun: Maverick are likely to be smashed during the Christmas period by another long-delayed sequel, Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, which opens in December.
Pundits predict audience warmth and anticipation around the title to confound its many critics, with many noting that even a 50% drop from the first film’s takings would still earn it $1.4bn.
When the teaser trailer for the new film was released, it was watched 148.6m times in 24 hours – easily beating the trailers for recent Star Wars movies.
Cruise’s next film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, is due for release in 2023.
