‘Top Gun: Maverick’ wins Tom Cruise’s first $100 million opening

Forget breaking the sound barrier: Tom Cruise has just passed an important career milestone.

With “Top Gun: Maverick,” the 59-year-old superstar just had his first $100 million opening weekend. The long-awaited sequel earned an estimated $124 million in ticket sales in its first three days in North American cinemas, according to Paramount Pictures on Sunday. Its global total, including international showings, is $248 million.

It’s a fast start for a film that still has the wide-open skies of Memorial Day to invest in. According to projections and estimates, “Top Gun: Maverick” will likely have more than $150 million by Monday’s close.

“These results are ridiculous, over-the-top fantastic,” said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. “I’m happy for everyone. I’m happy for the company, for Tom, for the filmmakers.”

Despite being undeniably one of the world’s biggest stars — perhaps even “the last movie star,” according to some headlines — Cruise is not known for massive blockbuster openings, as per Abc7.

Before “Maverick,” his biggest domestic debut was in 2005, with Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” which opened to $64 million. After that, it was “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” with $61 million in 2018. It’s not that his films don’t make money in the long run: They just aren’t enormously frontloaded.

“Top Gun: Maverick” traveled a long distance to reach theatres. The sequel to the late Tony Scott’s 1986 film “Top Gun” was originally scheduled to open in the summer of 2020. Its marketing campaign officially began in July 2019. However, the pandemic interfered with those plans, causing them to be delayed several times. The sequel reportedly cost $152 million to make and was directed by Joseph Kosinski, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and co-produced and co-financed by Skydance.

Even as the months and years passed and many other companies opted for hybrid releases, Cruise and Paramount stood firm in their desire for a major theatrical release. A streaming debut was simply out of the question.

“That was never going to happen,” Cruise said in Cannes.

And it’s a big deal, with 4,735 North American theatres showing “Top Gun: Maverick” (a record). It also opened in 23,600 locations across 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. “This movie literally waited for the movie theater to come back.”

The build-up has been equally flashy, with premieres on an aircraft carrier in San Diego and at the Cannes Film Festival, where Cruise was also awarded an honorary Palme d’Or, as well as a royal premiere in London attended by Prince William and his wife Kate.

“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.”

The film has also received rave reviews, with a 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. According to exit polls, 58 percent of male audiences gave it an A+ CinemaScore.

Cruise reprises his role as Maverick, who returns to the elite aviation training course to train the next generation of flyers, which also stars Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Greg Tarzan Davis, Danny Ramirez, Lewis Pullman, and Jay Ellis. Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, and Val Kilmer play their roles in the original.

“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.”

“Maverick” is now among the top pandemic era openings, still led by “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.

Notably, “Top Gun: Maverick” is the only non-superhero film among them. It also did draw a diverse range of age groups to the theatre. An estimated 55% of the audience was over the age of 35.

“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.”

The only new release that dared to compete with “Top Gun” was “The Bob’s Burgers Movie.” The animated film earned $12.6 million from 3,425 locations and was released by 20^th Century Studios and Disney. It debuted third, trailing “Doctor Strange 2,” which grossed $16.4 million in its fourth weekend in theatres.

“Top Gun” will essentially have the skies to itself until “Jurassic World: Dominion” hits theatres on June 10.

“It has a really nice, open marketplace to play,” Dergarabedian said. “Tom Cruise has always been about consistency. 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.”

Comscore estimates ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at US and Canadian theatres. The final domestic data will be released on Tuesday.

1. “Top Gun: Maverick,” $124 million.
2. “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” $16.4 million.
3. “The Bob’s Burgers Movie,” $12.6 million.
4. “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” $5.9 million.
5. “The Bad Guys,” $4.6 million.
6. “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” $2.5 million.
7. “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” $2.5 million.
8. “The Lost City,” $1.8 million.
9. “Men,” $1.2 million.
10. “F3: Fun and Frustration,” $1 million.