If you’re one of the many people to have seen Top Gun: Maverick, then it goes without saying that the airborne sequel is unquestionably one of the year’s best movies, the blockbuster to beat in 2022, and a potential early contender for a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards.
Of course, all of the acclaim in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if the film in question isn’t making any money, but Maverick also has that well and truly covered. Not content with scoring the biggest opening weekend of Tom Cruise’s entire career, the highest-grossing Memorial Day debut of all-time, and the top-earning non-Marvel Tuesday ever seen in the month of May, even more commercial dominoes are set to fall imminently.
Fresh from passing the $356 million global haul of the 1986 original after less than a week in theaters, Maverick will additionally become Cruise’s largest-ever hit on domestic shores by the end of Sunday, with Joseph Kosinski’s spectacular epic rapidly closing in on the $606 million raked in by Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which remains the leading man and producer’s biggest box office success that isn’t part of his signature Mission: Impossible franchise.
Top Gun: Maverick will also move up to third behind only Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Batman when it comes to ranking 2022’s Hollywood hits, with all of the love being showered on the long-awaited second installment leaving everyone wondering why it took over three decades for things to come together in the first place.