Top Gun: Maverick has crossed the $1bn (£810m) mark in global box office receipts, making it the most successful film of 2022 so far, and the most successful of Tom Cruise’s career.
Variety reports that Top Gun: Maverick’s global box office takings now total $1.006bn (£813m) after 31 days on release, overtaking 2022’s previous highest earner Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which now stands on $947m (£772m). By far the film’s biggest territory is the US, where it has earned $522m, followed by the UK ($70m) and Japan ($41m).
Top Gun: Maverick has also comfortably overtaken Cruise’s highest grossing film at the global box office: 2018 thriller Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which managed $792m.
The film has proved durable in the US box office charts, with revenue projections suggesting it would returned to the No 1 slot in its fifth week on release, ahead of the Baz Luhrmann-directed Elvis. In the event, Elvis just shaded it, taking $31.1 m compared to Top Gun: Maverick’s $29.6m. Top Gun: Maverick had previously been pushed lower by films such as Lightyear and Jurassic World Dominion, but has been able to maintain its audience as the figures for its rivals diminished.
Variety says that “critical praise and stellar word-of-mouth” are helping the film to achieve these figures, while rightwing pundits claim that audiences are responding to its supposed conservative and “anti-woke” themes. It is, however, well behind the highest grossing film since the upheaval that the Covid pandemic brought to the cinema industry: that remains Spider-Man: No Way Home, released in 2021 with a global box office of $1.9bn.
