“Top Gun: Maverick” took to the skies in late May and hasn’t looked back. Tom Cruise’s latest release is now the ninth-highest grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office.
“Maverick,” the sequel to the hit 1986 film “Top Gun,” has grossed nearly $650 million in the US alone, a feat that has only been accomplished by a handful of other films. Just last week, “Maverick” blew past 2012’s “The Avengers” to take sole possession of ninth place on the list, and is within striking distance to pass No. 8 “Jurassic World” and seventh place “Titanic.”
Despite blockbuster hits like the long-running “Mission: Impossible” franchise and 2005’s “War of the Worlds,” ‘Maverick’ is also the first film in the 60-year-old Cruise’s four decade career to gross more than $1 billion globally. Its worldwide box office gross currently sits at nearly $1.3 billion and counting.
There are a confluence of factors that came together to fuel “Maverick’s” rise, according to Jeff Bock, a media analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co.
On top of glowing critical reviews and Cruise’s ability to draw a crowd at the movies, “Maverick” contended with far fewer competitors than a traditional summer blockbuster.
“There just wasn’t a lot of product out there,” Bock says. “Films that were well received, that had good word of mouth, have really stuck around longer.”
The only competition “Maverick” had to face on its May 27 release was “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” which, with a $34 million haul over the past two months, failed to make back its budget.
One thing that has made “Maverick’s” box office performance stand out is how steady its ticket sales have been compared to other big films.
“What Top Gun did was hold that audience week in and week out, which we just haven’t seen in the blockbuster era,” he says. “Traditionally, blockbuster films drop anywhere between 50% or 60% after that first weekend. What Top Gun did was drop in the 20th percentile. You’re talking about drops in the teens and 20s and 30s from week to week.”
What Top Gun did was hold that audience week in and week out, which we just haven’t seen in the blockbuster era.
Jeff Bock
media analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co.
“Maverick’s” performance is better than what even the most bullish box office prognosticators had forecasted for the sequel, which was released just a few weeks after Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and a little over a month before “Thor: Love and Thunder.”
“Even the most optimistic box office analysts were saying ‘Maybe $300 million domestic,’ and it doubled that amount and is still going,” Bock says. “It just was not expected on any level going up against two Marvel films.”
Wherever “Maverick” ends up on the all-time rankings remains to be seen, but Bock believes that one thing is for certain: this likely won’t be the last installment in the series.
“I’m sure Paramount will try with all their might to get as many ‘Top Gun’ movies as there are ‘Fast and Furious’ movies,” he says. “You can definitely see that new crew getting their own wings and taking this franchise off on their own.”
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