‘Top Gun’ Nostalgia Banks $124 Million In Holiday Debut

(Bloomberg) -- “Top Gun: Maverick” topped the Memorial Day weekend box office, appealing to a broad swath of viewers, including many who have been slow to return to theaters.

• The sequel film, starring Tom Cruise as the titular Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, raked in an estimated $124 million in Friday-through-Sunday ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada, Paramount Pictures said in an email. That was short of the $130 million estimate from BoxofficePro.com. Bloomberg Intelligence projected up to $107 million.
• “Top Gun,” produced by Paramount Global and Skydance Media, gave theaters one of their biggest box office debuts since the start of the pandemic. It's a rare nonsuperhero movie among the top performers, trailing Sony Group's “Spider-Man: No Way Home” at $260 million Walt Disney Co.'s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” at $187 million, and Warner Bros.'s “The Batman” at $134 million.

Key Insights

• Cruise's reprisal of his 1986 performance resonated well with audiences and critics. More than 97% of each recommended the flick, according to review aggregator site RottenTomatoes.com. The Washington Post wrote that the movie, which follows Cruise's character as he trains a group of young pilots, was “familiar and new in just the right proportions” and also commended Cruise's performance as “commanding and generous.”
• The opening weekend was the biggest ever for Cruise, and Paramount said 55% of the audience was over age 35.
• The movie likely won't get a release in China, diminishing its global revenue. Chinese technology company Tencent Holdings Ltd. had signed on to co-finance the film in 2019 but pulled out over concerns that the movie glorifies the US military, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• The film pairs old stars like Cruise and Val Kilmer -- who played Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in the original -- with fresh faces such as Miles Teller, who plays the son of Maverick's late friend Nick “Goose” Bradshaw.
• “Top Gun” represents a return to normalcy as viewers once again seek refuge from the heat in air-conditioned theaters. Like pre-pandemic summers, studios will more regularly roll out big-budget films such as Universal Picture's “Jurassic World Dominion” and Disney's “Lightyear,” both slated for June.

(Updates with charts and bullet item on age of audience)

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