The moviegoing experience was one of the leisure activities put on hold at the height of the pandemic, and even when new movies came back to theaters, it wasn’t the same as before. In a different time, for instance, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet would have set the box office on fire. It did not. Even now, only a handful of movies have been bona fide blockbusters. One of them is Top Gun: Maverick, which last weekend not only got into a photo finish with Elvis but also became Tom Cruise’s first movie to cross the billion dollar line. And to celebrate, Cruise — who filmed himself watching Tenet when theaters starting opening back up — penned a nice thank you note to the industry and to audiences who’ve mostly returned to theaters.
To all the films in release, to all the studios, and to all the exhibitors: congratulations. To the audience: thank you for venturing out and allowing us to entertain you.
See you at the movies.
— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) June 27, 2022
“To all the films in release, to all the studios, and to all the exhibitors: congratulations. To the audience: thank you for venturing out and allowing us to entertain you,” Cruise wrote. “See you at the movies.”
Of the 1,006,936,963 the belated sequel has made worldwide, over half of that is in the United States. And to think Cruise had to fight to keep the movie off streaming, as so many other would-be blockbusters did when audiences were stuck at home. Cruise was extremely proud of the film even before anyone saw it. It actually played the Cannes Film Festival and Cruise showed up at the premiere in a helicopter he piloted himself. And to think he’s turning 60 in just a few days from this writing.