Top Gun: Maverick on track for best opening box office of Tom Cruise’s career
Thursday previews are already accelerating Cruise's legacy sequel straight into the "Oh God, That's A Lot Of Money" Zone
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Tom Cruise’s big, wide, shiny teeth are about to take a big ol’ chunk out of the box office, Deadline reports: Early box office previews for Cruise’s planes-go-fast sequel Top Gun: Maverick are already the best of the actor’s career, and the best ever for studio Paramount. All told, the film’s Thursday winnings (plus returns from a Tuesday preview event, and discounting the international box office, where it’s also doing well) amount to $19.3 million, setting up what’s expected to be at least $80 million, and maybe quite a bit more, across the whole Memorial Day weekend.
There are a whole bunch of factors propelling Maverick to this dominant position, not least of which being Paramount’s extremely strong desire for it to do so: The film is getting the widest release in North American theaters ever, landing in 4,735 theaters this weekend. That’s in addition to a marketing blitz that has done everything in its power to transform the idea of a Top Gun sequel 26 years after the first movie Kenny Loggins’d its way to victory into a cultural phenomenon, instead of the joke it might be expected to be.
Which is not to discount the critical buzz around the film, which has been strong since the moment it first whooshed into theaters with a preview screening at CinemaCon back in April. Director Joseph Kosinski and the film’s supporting cast have come in for praise for their execution of both the film’s high-speed aerial stunts and its ground-based drama, but it’s Cruise—still, for all his faults, one of the best people in the planet at almost dying to make something cool-looking happen in a movie—who’s drawn the lion’s share of praise.
(Also: It’s Memorial Day weekend, and we’re all in a fairly robust period of “Pretending the pandemic is over,” and, again, they really are marketing the shit out of this particular instance of planes-go-vroom.)
The big question now is how much of this momentum Maverick can take into the holiday weekend; it’ll have to really push if it wants to beat the current record holder for a Memorial Day opening, which, for some reason, is 2007's Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, at $139.8 million. (Big win for Jerry Bruckheimer, producer on both films, either way, of course.) It’ll have a much easier time scoring the spot of biggest opening of Cruise’s career; its major competition there is Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds, which opened to $64.8 million back in 2005.
Meanwhile, despite being Goosed (sorry) by both the long weekend and Cruise’s star power, Maverick almost certainly won’t score the biggest opening of the year, period; Cruise is powerful and all, but this is still a Paramount movie, and it’s not going to knock Disney’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness ($187 million domestic) out of its top position unless something straight-up miraculous happens.
22 Comments
Given that Avatar and Avengers made $2.8B each adjusted for inflation, and given the great reviews, the Russian invasion, Tom Cruise’s popularity/nostalgia, it looks like the first movie to make over $3B.
Take the action from the first and overlay a story and dialogue that don’t sound like they were written by a 15 year-old and there’s no reason this shouldn’t be a smash.
And do you know, that’s more or less what they’ve done?
Finding out in six hours!
The first Top Gun came out in the era when Hollywood was fueled by cocaine, so even that 15 year-old screenwriter was out of his mind on drugs and hadn’t slept in seven days when he handed in the final revisions.
‘Kay, but, like the movie was, actually really good and really, really well done. Like, the last…I want to say 45 minutes or so? were just nonstop tension. Maybe it’s aimed straight at the lizard part of your brains but good golly, it’s dead on target and so well done. Snark away, but if anyone’s looking for a genuine good turn-your-brain-off time (and the success of the Fast/Furious movies sure suggests there’s an audience), my goodness. Maybe the best movie going experience I’ve had this year (early show, maybe six other people in the theater, spread out wide).
I was an early teen when the first was released and yes I know it’s not an empirically good movie, but I’m squarely in the demo that has a deep personal association with it. Saturday tickets are in hand.As for “instead of the joke it might be expected to be,” there’s no way Tom Cruise was going to let this film be a joke. Top Gun made him. He’s a weird dude who fronts for a horrific “religious” institution, but is also probably the biggest pro’s pro in Hollywood (as literally anyone who’s worked with him will tell you).Between the trailers and reviews? I’m pumped.
Early teen you is gonna love this. It’s definitely got lots of fan-service-y nostalgia moments stuffed into it, but I thought they were well done and never overbearing. Felt just like seeing the first one did back then, but even bigger. Great action, some genuinely emotional bits, and it’s very funny. It’s still a big dumb popcorn movie, but it’s the most fun I’ve had in a theater in at least a decade. Hours later and I’m still grinning.
PUMPEDFirst time in memory I’ve pre-bought tickets, and am discovering a lot of my friends have done the same. If you’re going to service nostalgia, this appears to be the way to go at it.
So what’d ya think of it? I actually went back and saw it a second time, something I haven’t done since Avatar.
Absolutely fucking amazing. Beat every expectation I had for it going in.
Hell I’m pumped and I’ve never seen the original and was born a year after it came out. I’m planning on finally checking it out before going to see this based on the reviews alone. The Oscars push for this is going to be bonkers.
Exactly. You forgive the man his transgressions because he positively bleeds competence.
It bums me out because all the people on this movie, and every other one since he’s been a leading man, will tell you he’s incredibly gracious and tries to make everyone around him better. FFS if he would just jettison Scientology.
It’s fucking awesome, absolutely not a joke.
Release the Snyder cut of Maverick NOW!!!
26 years? Does the AV Club currently employ children who believe Top Gun came out in 1996?
Oops.
Fuck you, I had just gotten 10 years younger! Why you gotta do me like that??
They were out by a decade on something else recently too but I can’t bring it to mind now.
…we’re all in a fairly robust period of “Pretending the pandemic is over”…Boy, we sure are. And boy, it sure isn’t. I’ll wait to see this in the comfort of my relatively germ free basement man cave thank you very much.
i think there was even a snarky way to bring up the standing o at cannes, which is itself like a simpsons joke about the year 2022. anyway can’t wait!