Tom Cruise's insistence that his latest star vehicle, Top Gun: Maverick, ride out pandemic delays and stay away from streaming, is paying off in big ways. The movie has opened with a huge $124 million across the three-day weekend in the States, on the way to a projected $151 million across the four-day Memorial Day holiday.
That's a big win for Cruise in particular, whose previous personal best box office debut was with the Steven Spielberg-directed War Of The Worlds in 2005, which made $65 million upon release.
Maverick is soaring far past that already, marking another first-place opening in the States for Paramount, which is having quite the year so far between Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Scream, The Lost City and Jackass Forever.
Around the world, Maverick earned a similar amount, $124 million, which is impressive given that it doesn't have the big markets of Russia and China to bolster its earnings. That translates to $248 million so far globally.
The movie will have the next couple of weekends largely to itself, before Jurassic World Dominion roars in on 10 June.
In other box office news, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness finally dropped to second place with $16.5 million (though the Marvel sequel has so far earned an impressive $868.7 million worldwide). The Bob's Burgers Movie, the one film that dared open opposite Maverick, took in $12.6 million across three days (likely $15 million for the holiday weekend) for third.