'Top Gun' Looks to Come Out on Top of the Holiday Box Office
by EG
Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to the 1980s action hit, finally debuts in theaters this weekend after years of waiting. The movie will certainly take the top box office spot away from reigning champ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but it's not certain how much drawing power Tom Cruise and his sequel to a 36-year-old movie still have. Read on for details.
Via Box Office Mojo.
After 36 years of waiting, Top Gun is finally getting a sequel, and it could not have come at a more opportune time. While the month of May got off to a terrific start led by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the box office has been in a free-fall since then, with last weekend’s overall gross of $75.6 million being lower than any pre-pandemic May weekend since 1999. Revving the summer box office back up this Memorial Day weekend is one of Hollywood’s last true movie stars, back in the role that first launched him into the stratosphere.
Tom Cruise returns to the cockpit for Top Gun: Maverick, a film that has been long in the making, with Cruise and Top Gun director Tony Scott in pre-production for the film before Scott’s death in 2012. Joseph Kosinski later got the gig, being no stranger to 80s revivals (Tron: Legacy) or Tom Cruise vehicles (Oblivion). Filming began in 2018, and a June 2020 release date was in place when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, causing a series of delays before it settled for the holiday weekend. Finally, Paramount is releasing it this week in 4,732 domestic locations (one of the widest releases ever) as well as in much of the world, though it hasn’t gotten a release date in China, a major market for Cruise (Mission: Impossible - Fallout grossed $181 million there).
In the new installment, Cruise gets to play both fighter pilot and teacher as Maverick is tasked with training the next generation of Top Gun grads for a secret mission. Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer co-star. At 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, it is Hollywood’s best reviewed film so far this year, and it has a two-week run to itself to milk the premium screens before Jurassic World Dominion hits. The aerial combat scenes are said to demand the big screen as they set a new benchmark for flight sequences, and as we saw with Cruise’s Mission: Impossible films, the marketing is promoting the practical over CG approach to the filmmaking and the intensive training the cast went through to pull it off.
The question is whether the combination of Cruise, the Top Gun brand, and the promise of real flying and real g-forces can entice both older audiences who made the first film a hit but have been slow to return to cinemas as well as younger audiences who don’t have the same nostalgic attachment to the original. Top Gun was the biggest film of 1986 and in the top ten for the decade, but three and a half decades later it isn’t clear how much pull the idea of a Top Gun sequel still has with moviegoers.
Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.