That Tom Cruise was going to score a career-best opening weekend with Top Gun: Maverick was a foregone conclusion, but with a $19.3 million haul in Thursday previews, the personal record is in his crosshairs. This is the highest grossing preview in Paramount’s history and the highest grossing Memorial Day preview in history. Released 36 years after the original Top Gun—an additional two because of the pandemic—Maverick is poised to land with an opening weekend haul between $85 million and $100 million. Some are expecting the film to comfortably clear the $100 million mark, with bullish estimates going as high as $130 million over the long Memorial Day weekend.
All this is possible, given the film’s globe-trotting promotional tour that took Cruise to San Diego, Cannes, London, and Tokyo, and the spectacular reviews that the film is buzzing with. Clearly, Paramount showed supreme confidence in the picture, not only saving it for the big screen despite an ecosystem that could have tempted the studio to off-load it to streaming, but also by previewing it unusually early. Cruise, for his part, said at the recent Cannes Film Festival that a streaming release was never on the cards.
Maverick’s preview haul is more than three times higher than the actor’s previous best—Mission: Impossible — Fallout, which debuted with $6 million in previews back in 2018. Fallout remains his highest grossing film worldwide, with $791 million. Cruise’s best opening remains the $64.8 million that Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds scored over the Independence Day weekend back in 2005.
The first Top Gun, directed by the late Tony Scott, established Cruise as an action star, and finished its worldwide run with over $350 million. The sequel is directed by Joseph Kosinski, and serves as a sort of meta study of Cruise’s career and stature in the industry. The actor has been selling Maverick as a must-experience big-screen event -- of the $19.3 million, $4.1 million came from IMAX locations -- and he’d be looking to attract not just his usual older male demographic, but also younger males, and his significant female fans.
A $100 million opening would be a milestone in Cruise’s career—barring two occasions (War of the Worlds and Fallout), he’s never cracked the $60 million mark in the first weekend. His films do, however, tend to have legs. And with two (potentially final) Mission: Impossible movies lined up, he’d hope for a post-pandemic hot-streak over the next couple of years.
Elsewhere, 20th Century Studios’ attempt at counter-programming—The Bob’s Burgers Movie—made $1.5 million in previews, and is expected to debut with an opening weekend in the range of $10 million and $15 million.
Maverick also stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Monica Barbaro, Manny Jacinto and Val Kilmer. You can watch the trailer here, and read the official synopsis down below:
Test pilot Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Cruise) has purposely dodged an advancement in rank after thirty years of service. One day Maverick is called to be put in charge of training a group of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission under the orders of his fellow naval aviator friend and former rival, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Kilmer), who is the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Among them is Lieutenant Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Teller), the son of Maverick's late best friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Edwards).