Top Gun: Maverick Sets Tom Cruise Record

Ticket sales for opening weekend hit $124 million
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted May 29, 2022 2:00 PM CDT
Cruise Posts Personal Best With Top Gun: Maverick
An image released by Paramount Pictures shows Tom Cruise portraying Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in a scene from "Top Gun: Maverick."   (Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures via AP)

Forget breaking the sound barrier: Tom Cruise just flew past a major career milestone. The 59-year-old superstar just had his first $100 million opening weekend with Top Gun: Maverick. In its first three days in North American theaters, the long-in-the-works sequel earned an estimated $124 million in ticket sales, Paramount Pictures said Sunday. Including international showings, its worldwide total is $248 million. It's a supersonic start for a film that still has the wide-open skies of Memorial Day itself to rake in even more cash. According to projections and estimates, by Monday's close, Top Gun: Maverick will likely have over $150 million.

"These results are ridiculously, over-the-top fantastic," said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. Though undeniably one of the biggest stars in the world, Cruise is not known for massive blockbuster openings. Before Maverick, his biggest domestic debut was in 2005, when Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds opened to $64 million. Mission: Impossible—Fallout posted $61 million in 2018. It's not that his films don't make money in the long run, they just aren't enormously frontloaded. A record 4,735 North American theaters are showing Top Gun: Maverick. It also opened in 23,600 locations in 62 international markets.

Below are estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at US and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

  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.
(More box office stories.)

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