Maverick’ Tops $1.1 Billion Worldwide

Acting like Minions: The Rise of Gru wasn’t even in the room, Tom Cruise celebrated his 60th birthday by watching Top Gun: Maverick earn another $25.545 million (-14%) domestic ($32.5 million over the holiday) and $37 million overseas (-16%) in is sixth global weekend. That brings its domestic total to $571 million (still in 12th place behind Incredibles 2’s $608 million finish) and $1.115 billion worldwide (in 28th place, just ahead of Transformers: Dark of the Moon’s $1.123 billion finish). In global grosses, that puts it above Joker ($1.073 billion) to make it the second biggest “no China” grosser behind Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.9 billion).

In terms of inflation-adjusted domestic earnings, Paramount and Skydance’s $170 million legacy sequel is between The Return of the King ($371 million in 2003/$569 million adjusted) and Batman ($251 million in 1989/$576 million adjusted). It’ll clear $600 million domestic by next weekend. It’s already the fifth-biggest non-Disney release in unadjusted domestic earnings behind Universal’s Jurassic World ($652 million), Paramount’s Titanic ($659 million), Fox’s Avatar ($760 million) and Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home ($804 million). Yes, Disney now owns the Avatar series (since they bought Fox in 2019) and was at least somewhat helpful in pushing Sony’s MCU Peter Parker passion play to infinity and behind, but I digress.

Its sixth-weekend gross is between Avatar ($34 million) and Titanic ($25 million) for second place. Speaking of Titanic, where’s our dance remix of Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand”? American Sniper’s sixth weekend ($30.6 million) was its third weekend of wide release. Frozen’s $28 million sixth weekend (+45% from weekend five over the Christmas/New Year’s frame) was its fifth weekend of wide release (it opened at the El Capitan five days before its Thanksgiving wide release). With Top Gun: Maverick (aimed at older and irregular moviegoers) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (aimed at kids and families) both shattering records, the era of Covid-cure box office analysis might be over.

I’d expect a more reasonable drop next weekend after the holiday and against Thor: Love and Thunder, but a key part of the film’s leggy success is that it’s playing to demographics who otherwise wouldn’t go to the movies at all. Presuming a normal rate of descent, and nothing about this film’s performance has been normal (it went up 1% in its second weekend in South Korea for a $27.5 million ten-day cume and went up 5% in its sixth weekend in Australia for a $51.5 million cume), we’d be looking at around $625 million domestic and $1.22 billion. But I’d bet on over/under $650 million domestic and $1.275 billion global.