Top Gun Maverick is a one-in-a-lifetime film at the box office it seems, as the film has returned for its second weekend with a massive push. The film has made $290M in the United States with a worldwide gross of $548.6M already. A big part of that is that the ticket sales for the film in its second weekend are powerful with only a 32% drop from its Memorial Day weekend. As of now, it’s the smallest second-weekend decline for a film that opened to more than $100M worldwide.
It’s beating the usual expectations of frontloading, even if earlier predictions expected it going in, as they usually drop around 50%. With this record hold, the film has become Tom Cruise‘s highest-grossing film ever at the domestic box office as it passes War of the Worlds from 2005, which stood strong at $243M. The film also didn’t face any challenge this weekend as only the limited release of David Cronenberg‘s latest body horror film, Crimes of the Future, found its way into theaters with $1.1M.
Top Gun does seem poised for a potential $1 billion release. The film pulled in a higher second weekend than even Spider-Man: No Way Home at around $84.5M. What would be interesting is to see if people came in for a second helping this weekend before the release of Jurassic World: Dominion and it could face a bigger drop by then. but if it keeps up this record hold, it will definitely hold on tight to the top spot at the worldwide box office.
Is this the end of superhero films? Not really, as Doctor Strange is performing incredible we’ll even after a stark drop in its second weekend while No Way Home got the added “Christmas” follow-up weekend influencing its drop. So, these two franchises existing comfortably next to each other would redefine and reinvigorate the box office. Plus, Top Gun Maverick was eleased at the perfect time and is reaching an audience that generally has distanced itself from theaters, especially during the pandemic. For now, we can only theorize and will see just how far this film’s legs will carry it.
