Top Gun: Maverick broke another notable box office record during its second weekend. Arriving 36 years after the iconic original, Top Gun: Maverick proved to be a legacy sequel well worth the extended wait. Thanks to Tom Cruise's intense commitment to practical stunt work, Top Gun: Maverick earned enthusiastic reviews, with some praising it as one of the best action movies in recent years. That positive word-of-mouth translated into tremendous commercial success, as the film's gone on to become one of 2022's biggest box office hits.
Debuting over Memorial Day weekend, Top Gun: Maverick broke box office records, and is now domestically the highest-grossing movie of Cruise's illustrious career. In addition to the great reviews, Top Gun: Maverick faced limited competition for ticket sales in the first couple of weeks of its theatrical run, meaning it was poised to have strong legs. Unsurprisingly, Top Gun: Maverick repeated as the box office champion in its second weekend, but how well it performed was unprecedented.
Per Variety, Top Gun: Maverick earned $90 million in its second weekend. That means it fell only 29% from its opening, the smallest decrease of any movie to gross $100 million or more in its first weekend. As a comparison, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness experienced 67% declines in their second weekend, while The Batman dropped by 50%.
Even with Top Gun's brand recognition and reviews, its box office haul is extremely impressive. Studio tentpoles are typically front-loaded due to pent up demand and anticipation, which is why many of them (including the well-received ones) see steep declines in their second weekends. Top Gun: Maverick being such an outlier speaks to the high levels of interest in seeing Cruise's latest on the big screen, showing audiences haven't tired of his death-defying stunts yet. The actor has two Mission: Impossible sequels on the way, so it's encouraging his action movies remain a high draw. Top Gun: Maverick also highlights the importance of studios appealing to non-Marvel audiences. The film features plenty of big screen spectacle like current comic book adaptations, but its target demographic likely skewed older than usual blockbusters.
It will be interesting to see how Top Gun: Maverick fares over the rest of its run. This weekend sees the release of Jurassic World Dominion, which is expected to be a massive hit in its own right. Early Jurassic World Dominion box office projections had it topping Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' debut, so Top Gun: Maverick is about to face serious competition. Still, with the word-of-mouth, Cruise's latest should continue to perform well at the box office, perhaps even becoming the actor's first $1 billion hit. So even if Top Gun: Maverick's time atop the charts is over, it's already a huge winner for Paramount.
Source: Variety