‘Top Gun: Maverick’ flies high; makes $548 mn globally over two weeks

Los Angeles, June 6 (IANS): Tom Cruise’s all-American action film collected a sensational $86 million from 4,751 North American theatres in the second weekend after its blazing May 27 release.

Those returns, according to ‘Variety’, rank among the top 10 highest-grossing second weekends in North American box office history. The second-weekend earnings also pushed ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ to $291 million in North America, enough to overtake 2005’s ‘War of the Worlds’ ($243 million) as Cruise’s highest-grossing film ever at the domestic box office.

At the international box office, the Paramount and Skydance release has eclipsed $257 million, bringing its global tally to $548 million, substantially more than its production budget of $170 million. Even by pre-pandemic standards, notes ‘Variety’, ‘Maverick’ is flying high at the box office.

In India, however, according to trade reports, it has managed only Rs 21.7 crore, despite releasing in more than 1,500 screens.

On the contrary, in North America, thanks to positive word of mouth, rapturous reviews and premium screens, ticket sales for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ dropped a scant 32 per cent from its $160 million debut over the long Memorial Day holiday weekend, reports ‘Variety’.

It is the smallest second-weekend decline for a movie that opened to $100 million or more, according to Comscore. That is an especially impressive benchmark — even for a well-reviewed movie — because blockbusters, such as ‘Maverick’, tend to be front-loaded and drop at least 50 per cent after the opening weekend.

By comparison, recent big-budget tentpoles ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, whose Hindi version, incidentally, is firmly ensconced at No. 2, after ‘RRR’, in the Indian market.

Each declined by 67 per cent in its sophomore outing, while Robert Pattinson’s ‘The Batman’ fell by 50 per cent in its second weekend. “It has never been more appropriate to say ‘the sky’s the limit’ for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’,” Paramount’s president of domestic distribution Chris Aronson wrote in a note to the press.

(IANS)