“Top Gun: Maverick” has become everything that Paramount, Skydance and movie theaters everywhere hoped it would be. After earning a studio record $51.8 million on opening day, Tom Cruise’s latest film is set to post the highest Memorial Day opening weekend in box office history.
Industry estimates currently project a $142.5 million four-day opening weekend from 4,735 theaters for “Top Gun: Maverick,” while Paramount is estimating $150 million. If it can push past $153 million, “Maverick” will break a Memorial Day opening record that has been held for 15 years by Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”
Paramount is also projecting a three-day opening of $123 million, which would pass Marvel’s “Iron Man 2” as Paramount’s biggest opening weekend of all time. And for “Top Gun” leading man Tom Cruise, “Top Gun: Maverick” will have passed his personal opening weekend record of $61 million set by “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” by the time Saturday matinees are finished.
Across the board, “Top Gun: Maverick” has received the sort of critical and audience acclaim usually seen by Marvel films with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 97% critics and 99% audience to go with an A+ on CinemaScore. With two weeks until “Jurassic World: Dominion” is released, “Maverick” should have a long runway to capitalize off of the incredible word-of-mouth with support from premium formats.
Also opening this weekend is 20th Century’s “The Bob’s Burgers Movie,” which took in $5.7 million on opening day from 3,425 theaters and is currently projected by industry estimates to post a decent four-day launch of $19 million. Prior to the weekend, Disney had projected a $10-14 million extended opening for this adaptation of the hit Fox animated series.
“The Bob’s Burgers Movie” is opening in third on the box office charts behind “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which is estimated to add around $20 million on its fourth weekend and reach a $375 million domestic total. “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” is winning over both critics and hardcore “Bob’s Burgers” fans with an A on CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 86% critics and 95% audience, though the film will need to win over moviegoers less familiar with the show to have longevity at the box office.
