'Top Gun' Will Shoot Down Challengers This Weekend

Top Gun: Maverick isn't just one of the biggest movies of 2022 so far. It's also the biggest movie of Tom Cruise's career. The long-awaited sequel had a gigantic opening last weekend, and it will easily best all the competition in its second weekend, too. It's success makes it the first non-superhero movie to be a bona fide hit in quite awhile. Read on for details.

Via Box Office Mojo.

There is no doubt that the box office is flying high after a stratospheric $127 million three-day and $161 million four-day holiday opening for Top Gun: Maverick, which was the biggest non-superhero debut since 2019 and nearly double the previous best Tom Cruise opening. The three-and-a-half decade in the waiting sequel also delivered a new record for Memorial Day weekend, beating Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Despite these highs, the lack of new releases is still holding back the box office, which is why May, despite being the second highest grossing month since the pandemic began with an overall box office of $786 million, was the lowest grossing May since 2006.

The month of May had two blockbusters with openings over $100 million (the other being Doctor Strange 2), but other than that it just had two films open in the teens, and nothing else to even open above $5 million. Compare this to May 2019, following the huge late April release of Avengers: Endgame, when there were three films to open between $50-100 million (Aladdin, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, and John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum), three more above $10 million, and six more above $5 million. This Memorial Day weekend, four out of the top ten films were from earlier months, compared to 2019 when Endgame was the only non-May release in the top ten for the holiday. While the rest of the summer slate is busier than May, there is still a relative lack of releases, with only four major studio films going wide in June compared to seven (plus three more wides from Lionsgate, Amazon, and UA) in 2019.

With nothing major opening this weekend, it is clear skies again for Top Gun: Maverick, and expectations for its second weekend are high given the film’s phenomenal word of mouth (it received the rare A+ CinemaScore). Cruise films typically hold well, with the last two Mission: Impossible films having second weekend drops below 50%. A larger drop may be in store here given the massive size of its opening, but if Top Gun 2 manages a similar hold then its second weekend could end up bigger than any previous Cruise film’s opening. The weekday numbers certainly suggest the film will stay in flight this weekend, as the $15.8 million Tuesday was the best Tuesday of the year (beating the higher opening Doctor Strange 2 and The Batman), the third best in the history of May (behind two Avengers films), and more than double the first Tuesday of the previous Memorial Day weekend topper Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. However it slices this weekend, Top Gun 2 will surpass War of the Worlds’ $234 million any day now to become Cruise’s top domestic grosser.

Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.