Box Office Discussion: Cruise to the "Top"

 Top Gun: Maverick blasts the Memorial Day weekend, while The Bob's Burgers Movie did OK as counterprogramming.

Top Gun was the biggest hit of 1986, which makes it surprising there wasn't a sequel by 1989.  Part of that was probably due to the reluctance of star Tom Cruise, who didn't appear in a sequel to a movie he had been in until Mission: Impossible II in 2000.  But time has a way of changing things, and when a sequel was finally announced in 2018, most thought it was a cash grab for an aging star whose box office prowess was considerably reduced from his heyday.  That it missed its original 2020 release date isn't a surprise, of course, but the fact that Paramount churned through three others before finally scheduling it for May 2022 seemed to suggest a troubled project that was likely to crash and burn.

So much for that theory.  From the moment public screenings of the film started happening, word-of-mouth was wildly enthusiastic, and so were critics who were near-unanimous in praise for the film.  And audiences, when finally given the opportunity to see a nearly 60-year-old Cruise return to perhaps his most iconic role 3 and a half decades later, audiences jumped on the highway to the theater zone and made Top Gun: Maverick the biggest Memorial Day opening ever.  The film grossed $127.7 million through Sunday and $160.5 million through Monday, ensuring that the film is likely flying to the $350 million mark at least.  It's also likely heading for a raft of technical Oscar nominations, and maybe, just maybe, some play in the major awards (Mad Max: Fury Road, another critically acclaimed many-years-later sequel that opened in May, was a Best Picture nominee).

Top Gun might have taken the breath away from box office observers (and is already the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2022), but it didn't utterly dominate the weekend box office the way other mega-openers like The Batman and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did earlier this year.  The good doctor himself was able to pick up $16.1 million through Sunday and $20.3 million through Monday, to bring its gross to $374.7 million.  That pushes it past The Batman to take over the top spot for the year.  

Opening in third was The Bob's Burgers Movie, a theatrical spinoff of the beloved, long-running animated sitcom.  The film served up $12.4 million through Sunday and $14.8 million through Monday.  Given that, despite its long run, Bob's Burgers never really broke out too much into the mainstream, those aren't bad numbers.  Expect this to top out between $30 and $40 million.

Hopefully, it will hold up better than fellow TV spinoff Downton Abbey: A New Era, which definitely did not act like an older-skewing costume drama with its nearly 65% drop from its opening.  The Brit soap grossed $7.4 million through Monday, for an 11-day total of $30 million.  At this point, it doesn't look like it's going to come close to the original's $97 million.

Long-runner The Bad Guys rounded out the Top 5, taking in $5.6 million through Monday for a total of $82.4 million.  Sleeper smash Everything Everywhere All At Once brought in $3.2 million through Monday for a total of $57.5 million.  Sonic the Hedgehog 2 wasn't too hurt by its release on Paramount +, as it racked up another $3.1 million for a total of $185.7 million.  Officially, The Lost City, for no reason at all, jumped 30% from last weekend.  I'm a bit skeptical that that happened, but the official four-day gross of $2.3 million was enough to send the action comedy over the century mark, with a new total of $102.2 million.

Falling as bad as Downton Abbey was last week's other British-film-set-at-a-rural-estate film, the thriller Men.  It brought in $1.5 million over the four-day weekend, for an 11-day total of $6.3 million.  It will likely finish under $10 million.

Rounding out the Top 10 was the week's third new opening.  The Bollywood comedy F3: Fun & Frustration opened over the long weekend to $1.2 million.

The weekend after Memorial Day is usually not a prime release weekend, but with Top Gun on one side and Jurassic World on the other, studios are all playing it completely safe this year, with only a handful of Indian movies going even semi-wide.  That should mean that this weekend's box office will probably resemble last weekend's a great deal.  Will Top Gun manage to stay on the right side of a 50% decline?  We'll find out next week.