Top Gun was 1986’s highest-grossing and sweatiest movie, finishing above Crocodile Dundee, Platoon, The Karate Kid Part II, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (even back then, people loved sequels). Could Top Gun: Maverick repeat the original’s feat?
The glorious sequel not only crossed the $400 million mark at the domestic box office this week ($401.8 million to be precise), it also surpassed Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($398 million) as the year’s biggest grosser.
Variety reports that “it’s only the second movie in pandemic times (Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first) to cross $400 million Stateside,” while “internationally, the sequel to 1986’s Top Gun has earned $362 million, taking its global total to a massive $783.8 million. Even by pre-COVID standards, Maverick is smashing box office expectations.”
Top Gun: Maverick is the biggest movie of Tom Cruise’s career, and possibly of 2022. Looking ahead, the toughest competition for Highest-Grossing Movie of the Year supremacy comes from Thor: Love and Thunder (unlikely, as Thor: Ragnarok “only” made $315 million in 2017), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (possibly!), and Avatar: The Way of Water. If anyone can take down Tom Cruise, it’s James Cameron.
For more on Top Gun: Maverick, check out our interviews with director Joseph Kosinski and stars Jon Hamm and Glen Powell.
(Via Variety)