Top Gun: Maverick Just Broke Another Huge Record
And there goes another record destroyed.
Tom Cruise is perhaps the biggest star on the planet. After 40 years of films ranging in every genre, the actor has done it all. His career evolved through different phases. A young and up-and-comer where he starred in films like Risky Business, Cocktail, and Top Gun. Then he was the blockbuster star of A Few Good Men, Jerry Maguire, and Interview with a Vampire. Followed by the Academy Award hunt in Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, and The Last Samurai. Most recently, the action star phase in Mission Impossible (the sequels), Edge of Tomorrow, and Jack Reacher. Finally, his newest phase sees a jumpstart from his biggest movie ever, the veteran mentor in Top Gun: Maverick. As it sets record upon record, the legacy sequel just reached a new mark for the movie studio.
With Top Gun: Maverick going into its eighth weekend in the theaters, Deadline reports that it surpassed $600 million overseas. The international milestone comes only a few days after the domestic box office reached the same mark. That makes the total box office at $1.2 billion and climbing. As surprising as it may sound when talking about the star’s filmography and impact on the industry, this is the first time in his career that Tom Cruis has surpassed the billion-dollar mark at the box office. Not only is it his highest-grossing film of all time, but it is Paramount Pictures’ highest-grossing as well, surpassing Transformers: Age of Extinction.
The film currently sits on the domestic chart’s 12th spot of all time. It is about to go head to head against the Disney Corporation as eight of the top 11 spots are held by Disney/Marvel/Star Wars properties. To give you a small inkling of how difficult it is to go up against the behemoth that is the Disney conglomerate, only five of the top 22 domestic earners of all time are outside the scope of Disney. Those include Avatar, Titanic, Jurassic World, The Dark Knight, and now Top Gun: Maverick. It is clear that his second run at Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is Tom Cruise’s biggest hit of his career.
None of this comes easily, as you can imagine. The cast of pilots starring alongside Cruise, including Miles Teller and Glen Powell, underwent a rigorous training regiment. Paramount Pictures boasts that Top Gun: Maverick incorporated the most intense film training as the stars took flight in the planes their characters would fly in the film. Not only did they fly in the actual cockpits, but they learned cinematography and had to direct themselves as they ran the cameras on board. Tom and the cast talk about what it was like in a video that should give any fan goosebumps.
In a world of CGI and cheap tricks, Tom Cruise leads the way with some of the most ridiculous stunts in film after film. He puts his body (and apparently the bodies of his co-stars) through the most demanding training to get them to a place where they can deliver some of the most extraordinary scenes the industry knows. With Top Gun: Maverick, that approach has paid off enormously.
