‘Top Gun: Maverick’ becomes the first $1 billion Tom Cruise film

NEW YORK

“Top Gun: Maverick,” the sequel to the 1986 blockbuster, in which Tom Cruise reprises the famed role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, has crossed the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office, according to Paramount.

“Maverick” is the first film in Cruise’s more than 40-year career to reach the billion-dollar milestone and it’s also the second-highest-grossing film in Paramount’s long history in terms of domestic figures, behind only 1997’s “Titanic,” CNN has reported.

What’s more, “Maverick” notched its impressive box office figures in a sort of old-fashioned way: It scored a record opening over Memorial Day weekend and hasn’t slowed much since.

“It’s rare to get the special kind of alchemy that creates a true event film, and we have been absolutely blown away by the global response,” Brian Robbins, Paramount Pictures’ president and CEO, said in a statement.

“For any film to join the $1 billion club is a monumental achievement,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscor, (SCOR) told CNN Business. “But ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ hitting $1 billion during the pandemic is a bit different.”

“It was the perfect movie at the perfect time because it starred one of Hollywood’s last movie stars, in a movie that delivered on all fronts to all audiences around the world,” he added.

Critics have also piled on praise. The movie, in which Maverick returns to teach a new set of pilots how to take on an impossible mission, has a near-perfect 97 percent score on review site Rotten Tomatoes.

So far, the split for “Maverick” is more than $520 million domestically and more than $468 million overseas. It is the 50th film in history to make more than $1 billion at the global box office, not accounting for inflation.