Maverick’ Tops $1.2 Billion Worldwide

Paramount and Skydance’s Top Gun: Maverick has passed $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office, including $605.5 million domestic and $602.5 million overseas sans a single penny from China and Russia. This makes the film, already Paramount’s biggest (sans inflation) domestic grosser behind Titanic ($600 million in 1997/1998 and $659 million counting the 2012 3-D reissue), Paramount’s biggest global grosser. It has passed the $1.105 billion gross of Transformers: Age of Extinction, which was the top grossing film of 2014 and sits behind James Cameron’s Titanic. However, the Kate Winslet/Leonardo DiCaprio romantic melodrama (which has grossed $2.2 billion global) was distributed overseas by 20th Century Fox, meaning the Joseph Kosinski-directed, $170 million-budgeted Top Gun 2 is the biggest “all Paramount” global earner.

That puts the Tom Cruise/Miles Teller/Jennifer Connelly/Jon Hamm/Glen Powell action drama between Minions ($1.15 billion in 2015) and Iron Man 3 ($1.214 billion in 2013) for 22nd place globally. Presuming it continues onward, next on the list are The Fate of the Furious ($1.236 billion), Incredibles 2 ($1.243 billion), Beauty and the Beast ($1.263 billion) and Frozen ($1.282 billion) before it possibly joins the $1.3 billion club. Oh, and once it passes the $608 million domestic gross of Incredibles 2 ($609 million), it’ll be the biggest-grossing, in unadjusted domestic earnings, “part two” sequel of all time. On the global list, once it passes Incredibles 2 it’ll be behind only Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 billion) and Frozen II ($1.45 billion).

Top Gun: Maverick has the biggest gross jump from a respective part one installment, earning (sans inflation and thus far) $426 million more domestically and $832 million worldwide more than Top Gun ($180 million/$376 million mostly in 1986). Even Wolf Warrior II ($870 million in 2017) earned “only” $788 million more worldwide than the $81 million grossed by Wolf Warrior in 2015. The China-only upswing (from $81 million to $854 million) still leaves Maverick in the dust in terms of single-territory jumps. Maverick has earned 3.36x more domestically and 3.2x more worldwide than Top Gun, ironically without China which was the very territory whose decade-long expansion likely convinced all parties that Top Gun 2 could score globally in the first place.

That’s not a record in terms of percentage, even for a big movie follow-up to a big movie predecessor (sorry Boondock Saints or Mad Max), as (for example) Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle earned $964 million global or 3.6x the $267 million gross of Jumanji in 1995. Nonetheless, it’s the first real-world actioner to top the summer box office since Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible II ($215 million/$545 million) in 2000. Whether it ends the year on top will be determined by Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (whose predecessor earned $1.346 billion in 2018, including $700 million domestic and $105 million in China) and Avatar: The Way of Water (whose predecessor has grossed $760 million domestic and $2.8 billion worldwide including $255 million in China).