The newest Top Gun film has arguably given celebrity Tom Cruise his first $100 million (approximately Pounds 79 million) opening weekend at the marketplace.
In Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise reprises his role as US navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell from the original 1986 film.
The sequel earned an estimated $124 million (£98m) in ticket sales in its first three days in North American theatres, Paramount Pictures said Sunday.
Worldwide, that figure is estimated at $248 million (196m).
According to Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution, the movie’s box office results are “ridiculously, over-the-top fantastic.”
I’m happy for everyone involved in the situation. I’m happy for Tom, I’m happy for the filmmakers.
The 2005 movie War of the Worlds is Cruise’s biggest opening weekend to date, having made $64 million (£50m).
The fourth film in the Maverick franchise, The 59-year-old’s second outing as Maverick, had the fourth biggest opening of any film in the Covid-era. It sold more tickets than Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the UK premiere of the new film recently.
The original movie topped last Wednesday’s weekly UK film chart, as fans young and old prepared for the official release of the sequel last Friday.
The Official Charts Company’s commercial director, Becca Monahan, said it was “fantastic to see Tom Cruise back in the skies again after 36 years”.
The original Top Gun has made history by getting to number one on the Official Film Chart and many of those sales were digital downloads, according to the BBC.
Liz Bales, chief executive of the British Association for Screen Entertainment, expects that the sequel will “take cinema audiences’ breath away on the big screen” – a nod to the original film’s Oscar-winning song.
The return of Top Gun: Maverick earlier this month was praised by critics, who called it a “barrier-breaking sequel.”
The Independent of London claimed, “It’s as thrilling as blockbusters get,” praising it as a “true legacy sequel.”
The Telegraph reviewed the movie as “absurdly exciting” and called it “unquestionably the best studio action film in years”.
 opening weekend at the marketplace.){kind=link}