The year’s biggest hit, Top Gun: Maverick is refusing to slow down at the box office. The legacy sequel added $7 million domestically in its 11th weekend of release, taking its domestic total to $662 million. The film has made $690 million overseas, for a global box office haul of over $1.35 billion.
Maverick is (by far) the biggest film of star Tom Cruise’s storied career, the biggest film of 2022, and the biggest domestic hit in the history of Paramount Pictures. The film has made over $100 million from IMAX theaters, and recently passed Titanic to become the seventh-biggest hit of all time at the domestic box office. It now trails Avengers: Infinity War ($678 million), Black Panther ($700 million), Avatar ($760 million), Spider-Man: No Way Home ($804 million), Avengers: Endgame ($853 million) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936 million). Currently, on the 13th spot on the highest grossing worldwide list, Maverick has bested Black Panther ($1.347 billion), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 ($1.342 billion) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($1.332 billion). It now trails Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.402 billion) and Frozen II ($1.45 billion). Titanic's worldwide gross stands at $2.2 billion.
Maverick is largely responsible for having turned Paramount’s fortunes around. The studio, which was struggling to compete only a couple of years ago, with major franchise flops such as Transformers: The Last Knight and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, has delivered five box office hits in 2022 alone: Scream, Jackass Forever, The Lost City, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, in addition to Maverick.
The film broke the Memorial Day weekend record with a $160 million debut in May, and remained a fixture on the top five list for 10 whole weeks before slipping to number six this weekend. Released 36 years after the original Top Gun, which was directed by the late Tony Scott, the sequel brings back Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell to introspect about his own legacy and train a group of young pilots for a dangerous mission. The first film made an excellent $357 million worldwide against a reported budget of $15 million back in 1986. Maverick’s success is a testament to Cruise’s stardom, which has sustained for four decades.
The actor has two back-to-back Mission: Impossible films lined up for release in the next couple of years, as he aims to bring back the big screen experience after industry-altering developments during the pandemic era. Paramount wisely chose to listen to Cruise and held off on selling Maverick to interested streamers, even as competition offloaded major titles to offset losses. Paramount also avoided jumping the gun (like Warner Bros. with Tenet) and releasing Maverick at a more uncertain time.
Besides Cruise, the film 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 our interview with director Joseph Kosinski here, and read the film’s 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).