Forget breaking the sound barrier: Tom Cruise simply flew previous a serious profession milestone. The 59-year-old celebrity simply received his first $100 million opening weekend with Top Gun: Maverick. In its first three days in North American theaters, the long-in-the-works sequel earned an estimated $124 million in ticket gross sales, Paramount Pictures mentioned Sunday. Including worldwide showings, its worldwide complete is $248 million.
It’s a supersonic begin for a movie that also has the wide-open skies of Memorial Day itself to rake in much more money. According to projections and estimates, by Monday’s shut, Top Gun: Maverick will probably have over $150 million.
“These results are ridiculously, over-the-top fantastic,” mentioned Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of home distribution. “I’m happy for everyone. I’m happy for the company, for Tom, for the filmmakers.”
Though undeniably one of many greatest stars on the planet — maybe even “the last movie star,” in accordance with varied headlines — Cruise shouldn’t be identified for enormous blockbuster openings.
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Before Maverick, his greatest home debut was in 2005, with Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which opened to $64 million. After that it was Mission: Impossible — Fallout with $61 million in 2018. It’s not that his movies don’t earn a living in the long term: They simply aren’t enormously frontloaded.
Top Gun: Maverick had a particularly lengthy journey to get to the theaters. The sequel to the late Tony Scott’s Top Gun, which was launched in 1986, was initially slated to open in the summertime of 2020. Its advertising marketing campaign technically began again in July 2019. The pandemic received in the best way of these plans, nonetheless, and it was delayed a number of instances. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and co-produced and co-financed by Skydance, the sequel reportedly value $152 million to make.
But even because the months, and years, glided by and lots of different corporations selected to compromise on hybrid releases, Cruise and Paramount didn’t waver on their need to have a serious theatrical launch. A streaming debut was merely not an choice.
“That was never going to happen,” Cruise mentioned in Cannes.
And it’s main, with 4,735 North American theaters (a document) displaying Top Gun: Maverick. It additionally opened in 23,600 areas in 62 worldwide markets.
“This is one of the longest runways for a marketing campaign for any film ever. And it only served to create more excitement around the movie,” mentioned Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “This movie literally waited for the movie theater to come back.”
The construct up has been simply as flashy, with fighter-jet-adorned premieres on an plane service in San Diego and on the Cannes Film Festival, the place Cruise was additionally given an honorary Palme d’Or, and a royal premiere in London attended by Prince William and his spouse Kate.
“The feeling you get when you watch this film with an audience, it’s pretty special,” Aronson mentioned. “The first big screening we had, there was spontaneous applause during the movie.”
Reviews have been stellar, too, with the movie notching a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences, who had been 58% male, gave it an A+ CinemaScore, in accordance with exit polls.
The new movie has Cruise reprising the function of Maverick, who returns to the elite aviation coaching program to coach the subsequent era of flyers, together with Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Greg Tarzan Davis, Danny Ramirez, Lewis Pullman and Jay Ellis. Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm and Val Kilmer, reprising his function from the unique, additionally star.
“This solidifies the notion that the movie theater is a singular and a vitally important outlet for people,” Dergarabedian mentioned. “People are looking for a great escape from everything that’s going on in the world right now.”
Maverick is now among the many high pandemic period openings, nonetheless led by Spider-Man: No Way Home with $260 million, adopted by Doctor Strange within the Multiverse of Madness with $187 million and The Batman with $134 million.
Notably, Top Gun: Maverick is the one non-superhero film within the bunch. It additionally attracted a large swath of age teams to the theater. An estimated 55% of the viewers was over 35.
“Superhero movies aren’t for everybody. This movie is for everyone and that’s what sets it apart,” Aronson mentioned. “The theatrical exhibition business has challenges ahead of it, but this is a shot in the arm for that.”
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The Bob’s Burgers Movie was the one new launch that dared go up in opposition to Top Gun. Released by twentieth Century Studios and Disney, the animated pic earned $12.6 million from 3,425 areas. It opened in third place, behind Doctor Strange 2, which earned $16.4 million in its fourth weekend in theaters.
Top Gun will proceed to primarily have the skies to itself till Jurassic World: Dominion opens on June 10.
“It has a really nice, open marketplace to play,” Dergarabedian mentioned. “Tom Cruise has always been about consistency. His movies are about the marathon. This is the first movie of his that is sprinting to big box office numbers. Here, he gets the sprint and the marathon.”
Estimated ticket gross sales for Friday by way of Sunday at US and Canadian theaters, in accordance with Comscore. Final home figures will probably be launched Tuesday.
1. Top Gun: Maverick, $124 million.
2. Doctor Strange within the Multiverse of Madness, $16.4 million.
3. The Bob’s Burgers Movie, $12.6 million.
4. Downton Abbey: A New Era, $5.9 million.
5. The Bad Guys, $4.6 million.
6. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, $2.5 million.
7. Everything Everywhere All At Once, $2.5 million.
8. The Lost City, $1.8 million.
9. Men, $1.2 million.
10. F3: Fun and Frustration, $1 million.
