Top Gun: Maverick, Paramount Pictures’ sequel to the original 1986 Top Gun, has crossed a milestone at the domestic box office that no Marvel Studios movie has been able to achieve.
According to box office analyst Gitesh Pandya on Twitter, Top Gun: Maverick earned $44 million at the domestic box office in its fourth weekend in theaters. Only three other movies in box office history have earned more than $40 million in their fourth weekends in theaters, including Avatar ($50.3 million), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (42.4 million) and Marvel Studios’ Black Panther ($40.8 million). These earnings also make Top Gun: Maverick the second highest-earning fourth weekend in theaters of all time, just behind 2010’s Avatar. Overall, Maverick boasts a domestic box office cume of $466.2 million.
Along with being ahead of The Force Awakens and Black Panther, Maverick also earned more than most Marvel Studios movies in its fourth weekend, including Avengers ($36.7 million), Spider-Man: No Way Home ($32.8 million), Avengers: Endgame ($30.0 million) and Avengers: Infinity War ($29.5 million). According to Pandya, other major franchises like every Marvel, Star Wars, Jurassic and Batman film earned less at the box office in their fourth weekends in theaters.
Top Gun: Maverick earned $160.5 million within its first four days of release after opening on Memorial Day weekend, setting new holiday weekend records and becoming Cruise’s highest-earning opening in North America. Maverick became the highest-grossing movie of 2022 in the United States when it crossed the $400 million mark, surpassing Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which earned $398 million domestically. With a global box office haul of $783.8 million, Maverick has not crossed the worldwide total for Multiverse of Madness. However, industry analysts also project that Cruise’s legacy sequel could cross the $1 billion mark before the end of its theatrical run.
Paramount Pictures’ Top Gun: Maverick is set nearly 30 years after the original 1986 film and follows Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) as he is enlisted to train a new generation of pilots. Cruise and Val Kilmer reprised their roles from Top Gun and also stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm. According to Cruise, it was crucial for Kilmer to return for the sequel for an extremely emotional scene in particular. “I really rallied hard for him to make the movie,” Cruise said. “The kind of talent that he has, and you see that scene, it’s very special, it’s just very special.”
Directed by Joseph Kosinski, from a screenplay by Peter Craig, Justin Marks and Eric Warren Singer, Top Gun: Maverick is now in theaters.
Source: Twitter
