Forget about breaking the sound barrier: Tom Cruise has just surpassed an important milestone in his career.
The 59-year-old superstar has just gotten her first $ 100 million opening weekend with “Top Gun: Maverick.” In its first three days in U.S. theaters, the long-running sequel earned about $ 124 million in ticket sales, Paramount Pictures said Sunday. Including international projections, its global total is $ 248 million.
It’s a supersonic start to a movie that still has the open skies of Memorial Day itself to make even more money. According to projections and estimates, at the close of Monday, “Top Gun: Maverick” will likely have more than $ 150 million.
Cruise, while undeniably one of the biggest stars in the world, perhaps even “the latest movie star,” according to several headlines, is not known for the big box office releases.
Before “Maverick”, his biggest national debut was in 2005, with Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds”, which opened for $ 64 million. After that, it was “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” with $ 61 million in 2018. It’s not that their movies don’t make money in the long run – they just don’t have a huge pre-charge.
The sequel to “Top Gun” by the late Tony Scott, which premiered in 1986, was originally scheduled for the summer of 2020. The pandemic got in the way of this plan and was delayed several times. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and co-produced and co-funded by Skydance, the sequel cost $ 152 million.
But as the months and years went by and many other companies chose to commit to hybrid releases, Cruise and Paramount did not hesitate to make a major film debut. A streaming debut was simply not an option.
“That would never happen,” Cruise told Cannes.
And importantly, with 4,735 American theaters (a record) showing “Top Gun: Maverick.” It also opened in 23,600 locations in 62 international markets. The accumulation has been equally striking, with premieres adorned with fighter jets on an aircraft carrier in San Diego and at the Cannes Film Festival, where Cruise also received an honorary Palme d’Or and a royal premiere in London in which Prince William and his wife Kate attended.
Criticism has also been stellar, with the 97% film on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences, who were 58% male, were awarded an A + CinemaScore, according to exit polls.
The new film makes Cruise reprise the role of Maverick, who returns to the elite aviation training program to form the next generation of flyers, such as Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Greg Tarzan Davis, Danny Ramirez, Lewis Pullman and Jay Ellis. Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm and Val Kilmer, who reprise their role from the original, also star.
“Maverick” is now among the most important releases of the pandemic era, still led by “Spider-Man: No Way Home” with $ 260 million, followed by “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” with 187 million dollars and “The Batman” with $ 134 million. .