This past weekend, Tom Cruise did something that he's never done before in his career: open a film with a domestic total over $100 million. Audiences across the country have been feeling the need for speed since this past Thursday when Joseph Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick launched in theaters, and it is clearly going to be one of the most successful movies that Cruise has ever made.
It's not just personal milestones that the popular sequel is reaching, however. As the latest box office numbers roll in, it appears that Top Gun: Maverick has also set a new high bar for the Memorial Day holiday weekend, surpassing a record that has stood in Hollywood for more than a decade.
When Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End arrived in theaters on May 25, 2007, the popularity of both the series and the star power of Johnny Depp led to a domestic total of $153 million after just four days. According to Variety, Top Gun: Maverick is set to eclipse that massive haul. In the time between Thursday night preview screenings and showings on Sunday, it made $126 million (up from the estimated $124 million that was reported on Sunday morning), and by the end of today it's expected that the sequel will have a gross of $156 million from ticket sales in the United States and Canada alone.
It should be noted that the ranking remains unaffected if you account for inflation. That $153 million from 2007 is equivalent to $213.3 million today... but that's not really how modern box office record keeping tracks things. It should also be noted that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ultimately grossed $961 million at the box office, and while Top Gun: Maverick will end up making a lot of money before it is done playing on the big screen, there is a zero percent chance that it gets anywhere near that number.
All told – including figures from overseas – the new Tom Cruise film has thus far made $248 million, which is already enough money for it to rank 17th at the box office among movies where Cruise plays a starring role. Another $10 million will push it into 16th place, surpassing James Mangold's Knight and Day from 2010.
If there continues to be synchronicity between the ticket sales both domestically and abroad for Top Gun: Maverick, it's realistic that it could end up making north of $700 million globally. That would allow it to compete with Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Fallout as the most successful Cruise film of all time (the action-packed sequel earned $787.2 million while playing on the big screen in 2018). It's fitting success given that the feature is among Tom Cruise's best movies.
The CinemaBlend box office column will certainly be keeping track of Top Gun: Maverick's progress in the weeks to come, and to get a glimpse at the big summer competition that is on the horizon, check out our 2022 Movie Release Calendar. You can find local screenings of the blockbuster on the official website.
