Top Gun: Maverick Digital Release Becomes Top Week-One Title of All Time

Top Gun was one of the best-selling VHS tapes of all time when it was released, and now its sequel has followed suit with the biggest opening-week sales in the history of digital movies, according to Fandango’s Erik Davis. Davis said that the movie is also already one of the 20 best-selling digital titles of all time. These numbers reflect not just enthusiasm for the movie, but the idea that blockbuster movies that don’t go straight to streaming can still have a decent sell-through life. It will be interesting to see how the film performs on DVD and Blu-ray when it comes to that.

Maverick has been the top-grossing movie of the year — so much so that it remains in theaters, even as the digital version is available to buy. With little real competition at the box office right now, Davis pointed out that there’s a real possibility that the movie could end up topping both the U.S. box office and the digital sales chart on the same week — something that’s virtually unprecedented, even after a  slew of day-and-date releases during the pandemic.

When it was first released on VHS in 1987, Top Gun was the best-selling tape of all time. While most movies in the early days of home video sold for upwards of $75 — a strategy by studios to keep them prohibitively expensive for average people — Paramount decided to embrace the VHS market with Top Gun. It was one of the first movies that was “priced to own,” and arguably changed the face of the home entertainment market forever when it sold huge numbers.

Top Gun: Maverick has received positive reactions from fans and critics. It earned a coveted  A+ CinemaScore, the first given in 2022, and has a 97% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

According to Top Gun: Maverick‘s official synopsis, After more than 30 years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. Training a detachment of graduates for a special assignment, Maverick must confront the ghosts of his past and his deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who choose to fly it.

Joseph Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick from a screenplay written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie. The film stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer.

Top Gun: Maverick is still in theaters, and also now available to buy on Digital. A DVD and Blu-ray will be released in November.