With nothing to hold down its high flying, TOP GUN: MAVERICK in its second weekend easily captured first place at the box office. Paramount’s “Movie of the Summer” grossed $86M in its second weekend, a worthy encore to its record-breaking opening last week for the Memorial Day holiday. Tom Cruise chalked up another record with this weekend’s TOP GUN performance being the smallest week two drop for any wide-release film in the last 2 ½ years.
Since the pandemic hit, even movies with big openings have struggled in their second week, with drops of 60% or more becoming commonplace. Most recently high-profile films such as MORBIUS and DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS dropped 71% and 69% respectively in their second weekend.
Three factors contributed to TOP GUN’s week two success. First and foremost, the film is enjoying a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score from critics and audiences, an indicator of the very positive buzz surrounding the movie. Second, the 45+ age demographic that is most interested in the film is notorious for taking its time to schedule moviegoing into their plans, rather than dropping everything to rush out to see it on opening weekend.
Finally, there was not much new competition at the movies this weekend, with the only other new wide releases being Neon’s Sci-fi horror CRIMES OF THE FUTURE which could only scare up $1.1M, and IFC’s psychological thriller WATCHER, which had an even lower take with $815,000.
This weekend’s TOP GUN performance is a very positive sign for the movie business. The film has already grossed $292M in its first ten days in theatres, which is already more than some pre-release estimates for its entire run. Studios and exhibitors can conclude that a blockbuster box office is still possible when a movie lands that gives the audience what it wants. Bravo to Paramount and Tom Cruise for not wavering in its commitment to release TOP GUN 2 on the big screen when once the pandemic had yielded and the time was right.
Holdover DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS finished second with $9.3M this weekend, and a total-to-date of $389M in its fifth week. Unlike TOP GUN: MAVERICK, THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE suffered in its second week with a drop of 62% but was still able to finish third with $4.2M for a total to date of $22.2M.
Next week’s top opener is Universal’s JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION will most likely gobble up the top spot on the box office charts, knocking TOP GUN: MAVERICK down a peg. However, we predict continued success for TOP GUN as well, which will deliver a strong one-two punch that exhibitors have not enjoyed for a while.