Memorial Day weekend used to be a big deal in the movie industry, but it’s become one of the worst dates to release a summer film in recent years. It turns out that breaking out the big guns, or in this instance, the huge planes, is the key to having a good opening on this once holy site. Top Gun: Maverick, starring Tom Cruise, appears to have rapidly taught the world of incoming films this lesson since the sequel is already shattering records on its first official day in theatres.
Those milestones aren’t solely pandemic-related standards, though, as Deadline reports that the $19.3 million haul beats two previous Paramount records. Top Gun 2 now has the best preview window in the studio’s history, with grosses from earlier this week’s fan gatherings added to the total from Thursday night’s showings.
Top Gun: Maverick breaks records
$19.3 million is a lot of money for a pandemic movie, and it’s a great triumph for the studio. This is also on track to be the largest Memorial Day weekend crowd ever. The film has received a lot of positive feedback from the audience. A quick look at Rotten Tomatoes reveals a near-perfect audience score of 99 percent and a critical score of 97 percent. It’s an uncommon occurrence when both consensuses agree. So Maverick may look forward to clean skies as Cruise brings a legendary action blockbuster out of the hangar after 30 years. This stunt, like most of his films, will be a smash hit.
Top Gun: Maverick’s spectacular debut might mark yet another milestone for Tom Cruise: it could be his first $100 million opening. Cruise’s biggest opening weekend, according to reports, was $65 million, owing to Steven Spielberg’s 2005 rendition of War of the Worlds. With another Paramount tie in the works for this particularly intertwined period of history, the studio might earn another Memorial Day honor in 2023.
Source – Deadline
