Last night, Joseph Kosinski’s long-awaited Top Gun: Maverick earned 19.3 million at the box office on its early Thursday opening. The first big summer blockbuster of the year has hit theaters after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and is set to break a box office record for the highest-grossing Memorial Day Opening at the box office. After many delays, Top Gun: Maverick is finally out and is projected to earn $142.4M over the four-day holiday weekend. If the Top Gun sequel earns where stats are leaning to at the box office, Top Gun: Maverick will have beaten a record Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which did $139.8M after releasing on May 25th, 2007; a record that’s taken 15 years to be broken!
It’s been 35 years since the original Top Gun was released in 1986. The Top Gun sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, brings back Tom Cruise reprising his iconic role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, one of the Navy’s top aviators at the time of the original. Val Kilmer is also starring in Top Gun 2, reprising his role as Iceman, while Miles Teller is starring as “Rooster,” the son of “Goose” from the original.
The 2-hour and 17-minute Top Gun sequel is the highest-grossing preview in Paramount Pictures history and the highest-grossing Memorial Day preview ever! The Top Gun 2 premiere has to be one of the best of Tom Cruise’s entire career. The original Top Gun gained a 56% on the Tomato Meter and an audience score of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, while Top Gun: Maverick is exceeding expectations with a current 97% on the Tomato Meter and a 99% Audience Score.
