Top Gun: Maverick: Tom Cruise Thanks Fans For Making it #1 Worldwide

By Spencer Perry

Over the weekend Top Gun: Maverick not only became the #1 movie in the world, set a brand new opening weekend record for the Memorial Day Weekend, and also the biggest opening of Tom Cruise's entire career. After propelling the movie to $160.5 million opening weekend over the four-day weekend, and earning the film a coveted A+ CinemaScore rating (the first of 2022), Cruise took to social media to thank the audience for feeling the need for speed along with him. In a tweet, he wrote: "Thank you to everyone who saw #TopGun: Maverick and helped make it a historic opening weekend."

When the first numbers for Top Gun: Maverick's weekend haul began to come in there was some confusion as to whether it was actually the new record holder for Memorial Day Weekend. Walt Disney Studios maintained that 2007's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was still the #1 Memorial Day Weekend when early projections for Maverick had it earning over $140 million over the holiday. Paramount's numbers were updated today though with the studio confirming that the Tom Cruise-lead sequel earned $160 domestically, pushing Pirates 3 out of the way by a margin over more than $7 million.

Internationally, Top Gun: Maverick opened with $124 million overseas, another record for Tom Cruise. Combined the film opened to a massive $248 million globally, meaning that it is already the #9 movie of the year at the worldwide box office. Considering hte critical acclaim for the movie, on Rotten Tomatoes the film has both a nearly perfect Audience Score and critic's score — 99 percent and 97 percent respectively, it's not wholly surprising that the film is on its way to becoming a monster hit for Paramount Pictures. The critical consensus for the film reads: "Top Gun: Maverick pulls off a feat even trickier than a 4G inverted dive, delivering a long-belated sequel that surpasses its predecessor in wildly entertaining style."

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

Paramount's official description for the sequel can be found here: "After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy's top aviators, Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: 'Rooster,' the son of Maverick's late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka 'Goose.' Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it."   

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