Top Gun: Maverick Just Shattered A Box Office Milestone For Paramount

Nearly seven weeks into its theatrical release, "Top Gun: Maverick" continues to fly high at the box office. The Tom Cruise-led sequel to 1986's "Top Gun" has toppled box office records nationwide, and while it's faced stiff competition from fellow recent releases like "Minions: The Rise of Gru," "Jurassic World Dominion," "Elvis," and "Thor: Love & Thunder," it's still continued to do well in theaters. 

Evidently, the film's unique combination of action, emotion, and nostalgia has proven to be completely irresistible to moviegoers worldwide. During its time at the multiplex, "Top Gun: Maverick" has racked up records at an unprecedented rate of speed. Yes, that's right. "Top Gun: Maverick" "feels the need... the need for speed."

As we've previously reported, "Top Gun: Maverick" smashed a major box office record when it became the new record holder for the largest Memorial Day opening of all time. In the weeks since, the film has taken breaking box office records to a whole new level, already earning itself more than $1 billion worldwide. Even more recently, the film broke another record that is impressive even by those metrics, one that cements "Top Gun: Maverick" as one of the most popular movies of all time.

At the time of this reporting, "Top Gun: Maverick" is currently Paramount's highest-grossing film of all time, at least domestically. With $601.9 million earned in the USA alone, Box Office Mojo reports that the film has already topped the record held by "Titanic," a film that pulled in $600.8 million during its first theatrical run in 1997. While two subsequent re-releases have subsequently shored the James Cameron disaster epic up to $659.3 million in domestic receipts, "Top Gun: Maverick" has definitely bested the film's original run. Naturally, this total does not take inflation into consideration, nor does it adjust for any future dollars that "Top Gun: Maverick" might accrue. 

Notably, "Top Gun: Maverick" still has quite a distance to go before it matches the foreign box office totals "Titanic" brought in. The latter film's international grosses came to $1.2 billion during its first run, while the international numbers of "Top Gun: Maverick" only sit at $587.9 million at press time. Although the film is still airing in theaters, it seems unlikely that Mav and his crew will best that particular figure anytime soon.

Of course, all of this is good news for Paramount, the studio behind "Top Gun: Maverick." The film it beat for that record, "Titanic," is also a Paramount release. For a studio with 110 years of cinematic history under its belt, that's quite an impressive dual feat. To mark the occasion, Brian Robbins, President and CEO of Paramount Pictures, expressed his pride in the film via a press release. Robbins' statement read in part, "Top Gun: Maverick is a phenomenal motion picture, and we take deep pride in celebrating this tremendous achievement alongside Tom Cruise, our filmmakers and cast, our marketing and distribution teams, and, of course, all the new and original Top Gun fans, without whom this wouldn't have been possible."