Maverick’ Nears $650 Million Worldwide

In a quick update before I head off to my son’s fifth-grade graduation (yes, it seems they have graduations for every school year these days), Paramount and Skydance’s Top Gun: Maverick earned $9.1 million on Thursday, falling just 37% from last Thursday and 26% from Wednesday. This is by default the biggest weekday-to-weekday drop the film has taken since the day after Memorial Day, which is probably due to the $18 million worth of moviegoers who opted for Jurassic World: Dominion. However, even as it loses IMAX, Dolby and various PLF screens to Universal’s poorly reviewed (but likely to be “fine, whatever” with most paying audiences) dino threequel, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun legacy sequel is expected to hold its own in weekend three.

Even a 55% drop (on par with American Sniper on Super Bowl weekend in 2015) would be around $45 million for the Fri-Sun frame, giving the $170 million flick a $388 million 17-day total. A 40% drop (on par with The Passion of the Christ in weekend three against Johnny Depp’s The Secret Window) gives Top Gun: Maverick a $54 million weekend and a $397 million 17-day cume. If that happens, it’ll have already passed Rain Man ($172 million in 1988/$392 million adjusted for inflation) as Tom Cruise’s second-biggest “tickets-sold” domestic earner behind only Top Gun ($176 million in 1986 and $4 million in 2013/$440 million). Its current $343 million 14-day total means it’ll top The Batman ($369 million) tomorrow for the silver medal for 2022.

If it plays to “best-case scenario” business, it could end the weekend just past Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (around $398 million by Sunday night) to take the domestic crown sooner rather than later. Presuming a continued 53/47 domestic/overseas split, the film should be at around $645 million worldwide. Depending on how it plays overseas against the Jurassic World movie, it could (emphasis on “could”) end the weekend closer to $750 million than $725 million. Anything over the $694 million cume of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in 2011/2012 will make it Cruise’s second-biggest global grosser behind only Mission: Impossible – Fallout ($792 million in 2018). Assuming it thrives alongside the dinosaurs, it could crack $800 million by the middle of next week.

With Doctor Strange 2 earning under $5 million this weekend and due on Disney+ on June 22, Top Gun 2 and Jurassic World 3 can both run the tables in terms of live-action biggies (while Lightyear and Minions: The Rise of Gru both hope to become the first true animated blockbusters since Frozen II) for the next month. Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder opens on July 8, after we have Jordan Peele’s Nope (a horror film that could very well perform like a blockbuster in North America) on July 22, David Leitch’s Bullet Train on August 5 and, uh, that’s it for the summer in terms of biggies. As others and I have said many times, this is a ridiculously light summer.

There are several concurrent reasons for this scarcity, including post-production delays due to Covid, studio skittishness, streaming being foolishly prioritized over theatrical and 20th Century Studios/Searchlight delivering their entire slate to Hulu per their Disney overlords. Nonetheless, just as Spider-Man: No Way Home was incredibly leggy ($804 million from a $260 million debut despite a 67% second-weekend drop) due to a lack of competition (and no awards season breakouts), so too could the designated must-see crowdpleaser that is Top Gun: Maverick leg out well beyond what is normal for even a well-liked summer biggie. Like (offhand) Dune, Free Guy, Godzilla Vs. Kong and Uncharted, Top Gun: Maverick is performing much better than it would have in non-Covid circumstances in 2020 or 2021.