Top Gun: Maverick has already been something of a phenomenon at the box office, and in its fourth weekend on release the movie has continued to make history. While Jurassic World Dominion may have retained the top spot this weekend thanks to the underperformance of Disney Pixar’s Lightyear, the Top Gun sequel has been quietly pulling in an impressive $44 million at the domestic box office, making it the second highest grossing fourth weekend in history behind Avatar.
Breaking down the huge feat, analyst Gitesh Pandya shared a series of posts on Twitter explaining how Top Gun: Maverick is one of only four movies to ever break the $40 million mark after four weeks on release. Currently, 2010’s Avatar sits at the top of the table for fourth weekend takings with $50.3 million, followed now by Top Gun: Maverick’s $44 million, then going down to Star Wars: The Force Awakens with $42.4 million and Black Panther with $40.8 million. There are many movies that hit the box office with a huge footfall in the opening weekend and second weekend, but then numbers usually start to drop off into the third and fourth weeks. Top Gun: Maverick, having bucked every trend so far, has now added this one to its tally.
When putting all of this in context with other movie releases, particularly those by Marvel Studios, Top Gun: Maverick has done what even behemoths like Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home couldn’t achieve. In a follow-up post, Pandya summed this up by listing the franchise movies that the film has beaten.
Top Gun: Maverick Has Shown That Legacy Sequels Can Work
While there has been a wave of semi-successful legacy sequels, most have had a reasonable results at the box office thanks mostly to a wave of nostalgia that comes with belated sequels to 80s and 90s movies, but have been constantly called out for relying on fan service to get by. Top Gun: Maverick does have a small number of callbacks to the original 1986 movie, but they are done so subtly and contained within a well-scripted and acted storyline that both critics and audiences have raved about the movie. This has seen it become one of the highest reviewed legacy sequels ever and kept the money rolling in at the box office.
Having already become the highest grossing movie of the year so far at the domestic box office, there are many believe that the movie will end its run by taking more than $1 billion worldwide. Whether it will end up being the highest grossing movie of the year is something that is yet to be seen as it has some tough competition from the likes of Jurassic World Dominion, Thor: Love and Thunder, Minions: Rise of Gru and, later this year, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Of course, all of that is pretty irrelevant, as Top Gun: Maverick has already done everything required to prove its worth, and has paid off for those who have waited a long time for the film’s release.