'Top Gun: Maverick' Helps Tom Cruise Secure a First for His Career

Tom Cruise just marked a major milestone in his career. Top Gun: Maverick earned the 59-year-old movie star his first $100 million opening weekend. The picture earned $124 million in its first three days in North American theaters, Paramount Pictures said Sunday. Worldwide, the film has taken in $248 million.

With Memorial Day approaching, by Monday's close, Top Gun: Maverick will likely have made over $150 million, according to projections and estimates. "These results are ridiculously, over-the-top fantastic," said Chris Aronson, Paramount's president of domestic distribution, in a statement to the Associated Press. "I'm happy for everyone. I'm happy for the company, for Tom, for the filmmakers."

Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which opened to $64 million in 2005, had been his biggest domestic debut before Maverick. That was followed by Mission: Impossible – Fallout with $61 million in 2018. 

Originally scheduled to open in the summer of 2020, Top Gun: Maverick is the sequel to Tony Scott's 1986 film Top Gun. Although the marketing campaign was supposed to begin in July 2019, the pandemic got in the way of those plans, and it was repeatedly delayed. Joseph Kosinski directed, Jerry Bruckheimer produced, and Skydance co-produced and co-financed the sequel, which reportedly cost $152 million to make, according to the AP.

Cruise and Paramount chose not to compromise on their desire for a theatrical release, and a streaming debut was simply out of the question. Their persistence paid off, with a record 4,735 North American theaters showing Top Gun: Maverick and 23,600 in 62 international 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," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore told the AP. "This movie literally waited for the movie theater to come back."

Cruise returns to the role of Maverick, who is sent back to the elite aviation training program to prepare a new batch of aspiring pilots. He is joined by Miles Teller, Danny Ramirez, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, Jennifer Connelly, and Jon Hamm. Val Kilmer also stars, reprising his role from the original film.

In addition to its favorable reviews, the film racked up a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score and a perfect A+ CinemaScore from exit polls, which showed that 58% of male audiences gave it a perfect rating."The feeling you get when you watch this film with an audience, it's pretty special," Aronson said. "The first big screening we had, there was spontaneous applause during the movie."

"This solidifies the notion that the movie theater is a singular and a vitally important outlet for people," Dergarabedian said. "People are looking for a great escape from everything that's going on in the world right now."

Among the top pandemic era openings, Maverick is now ranked third behind Spider-Man: No Way Home with $260 million, followed by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with $187 million and The Batman with $134 million. Among them, only Top Gun: Maverick is not a superhero movie, and it drew a wide range of ages, with an estimated 55% of the audience over 35 years old.

"Superhero movies aren't for everybody. This movie is for everyone and that's what sets it apart," Aronson said. "The theatrical exhibition business has challenges ahead of it, but this is a shot in the arm for that."

"Tom Cruise has always been about consistency," Dergarabedian said. "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." The film's final domestic numbers will be released on Tuesday.

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