Top Gun: Maverick just reached new heights in its ongoing flight through the movie industry stratosphere. According to a report by Variety, Maverick surpassed Avengers: Infinity War at the North American box office this weekend. It now has the sixth-highest grossing domestic sales of all time.
As of this weekend, Maverick has made $679 million in North America, overtaking Infinity War which is at $678 million. This is extremely notable for several reasons, including the fact that Maverick was delayed so many times by the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point, the long wait for the movie was a bit of a punchline on social media, and even now some movies struggle to make the kind of money they would have before the pandemic hit. However, Maverick has succeeded in part with an extended theatrical run, as it has been showing since May in some places.
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Maverick is a belated sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, which gives it some recognizability and legacy. However, it’s hard to compare that to the buildup for Infinity War. The latter was the culmination of over 20 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, enacting a decade-long promise to tie all of these films together in a way that would make them all feel significant at once. It was a cultural phenomenon that seemed at the time to be leagues above any sequel or series up until that point.
By contrast, Top Gun was a self-contained story that star Tom Cruise himself once said he would never do a sequel to. At the time, Cruise was interviewed by Playboy and he said that a Top Gun sequel would be “irresponsible,” as it would likely become a form of military propaganda.
“OK, some people felt that Top Gun was a right-wing film to promote the Navy. And a lot of kids loved it,” he said in 1990. “But I want the kids to know that that’s not the way war is – that Top Gun was just an amusement park ride, a fun film with a PG-13 rating that was not supposed to be reality… That’s why I didn’t go on and make Top Gun II and III and IV and V. That would have been irresponsible.”
Ironically, when Cruise eventually did return for that sequel, it came during an age of unprecedented sequels and franchises and surpassed them all. Much of that success has reportedly been attributed to strong word of mouth and many repeat viewings. Variety predicts that those trends will continue, as nothing coming to theaters soon seems like direct competition for Maverick.
However, a home video release may finally bring this streak to an end. According to a report by Collider, Top Gun: Maverick will be available to own digitally starting on Tuesday, Aug. 23, and on Blu-ray and DVD starting on Nov. 1. In the meantime, the movie is still playing in many theaters all over the U.S.
