Paramount is now calling the 4-day weekend for Top Gun: Maverick at $151M after a $38M Saturday, which is technically up 16% from Friday’s $32.7M ($52M less $19.3M Thursday previews). That uptick means a ton in today’s market, given how older skewing this movie is. Disney asserts it continues to own the Memorial Day weekend record with 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End with $153M; read previous update for all the agita. Still, with Top Gun 2, that’s the best Memorial Day weekend we’ve seen in quite some time.
Worldwide for Top Gun 2 is $248M, which is also the best Cruise has ever seen. For producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it’s his second best 3-day stateside debut after 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($135.6M), and ahead of the 3-day of At World’s End ($114.7M). EntTelligence reports that 11.1M moviegoers will have seen Top Gun 2 to date through EOD Monday, blowing away the 2M opening weekend traffic of the 1986 pic.
Updated demos are 58% guys, 42% women. The under-35 repped 45%, which is promising, considering that the sequel is appealing to a wider demo. Those over 35 repped 55%, while the 18-34 segment repped 37% of attendance. Diversity demos were 66% Caucasian, 16% Latino and Hispanic, 7% African American, and 7% Asian.
Close to half of the audience said Top Gun 2 exceeded expectations, while another 30% said they would see it again in theaters. All promising.
The sequel overperformed in the western US, Rockies, South Central, and southeastern US, was at norm in the Midwest, and underperformed in the Northeast. Canada drove 7% of the pic’s weekend. Those markets that overperformed include Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Diego, Tampa, Portland OR, Kansas City, Nashville, Oklahoma City, and Jacksonville. “Top grossing theaters hailed from a diverse and varied geographical spread including LA, Nashville, NY, San Antonio, OKC, Knoxville, SLC, Denver, Dallas, Wash DC, SD, Tampa, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland OR, Fresno, and Orlando,” reads Paramount’s note. PLF screen accounted for 22% of the weekend, while Imax contributed another 15% or $21M. For Imax, it’s also the biggest opening weekend ever for a Cruise film, and the biggest ever over Memorial Day weekend.
“If you thought movies were dead, go see Top Gun: Maverick and then let me know what you think. This film heralds the return of the summer blockbuster, and is a catalyst that will accelerate demand for moviegoing like an F-18 breaking the sound barrier,” beamed Rich Gelfond, CEO of IMAX in a statement. “There’s no way you sit in a theatre, with a huge screen and chest-pounding speakers, and come away thinking there’s any other way you want to experience Top Gun: Maverick, and our hats are off to Tom Cruise, Joe Kosinski, and their fearless creative team for what they’ve accomplished.”
There’s an argument to be made that Top Gun 2 is soaking up all the business this weekend at the box office; a trend that was certainly occurring pre-pandemic with big tentpole movies, and even as recent as Christmas with Spider-Man: No Way Home.
However, credit goes to Disney for giving the weekend some breadth with the fourth weekend of Doctor Strange 2, which beat The Batman as the highest-grossing movie of the year to date, and the debut of The Bob’s Burgers Movie. In regards to the latter, that was a project put into development before the Disney-Fox merger. It was always a niche movie, so these numbers aren’t shocking. The Simpsons Movie ($74M opening in 2007) was never expected to be. EntTelligence says that roughly 1.1M moviegoers saw Bob’s Burgers over the last three days, a figure that’s not far from its weekly series average of ~1.3M viewers (according to Nielsen data published on TVSeriesFinale, from 9/27/20 to 5/23/21). Great exits coming from the fans who showed up. Parents and kids combined repped 16% of the audience, while general audience was 84%. The 18-34 demo repped a huge 67% of the weekend’s traffic.
Overall, EntTelligence reports that Memorial Day 2022 vs. the holiday a year ago: Ticket prices are up 7.5%, PLF tickets are +3.2% and there’s 69% more available seats for the public.
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