Top Gun: Maverick has passed the $800 million mark at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing film of Tom Cruise’s career.
Deadline reports the action flick has usurped Cruise’s previous top earner, 2018’s Mission Impossible: Fallout, which earned $791.1 million worldwide. Maverick’s box office total now stands at $806.4 million, with $422.2 million coming from domestic audiences.
The sequel to 1986’s Top Gun now has a chance to become the first Cruise-starring film to join the billion-dollar club at the box office. However, sources tell the Hollywood Reporter that Maverick will likely tap out around $900 million, with the absence of a China and Russia release being the only reason it might not reach the $1 billion mark.
The news arrives just a few weeks after Maverick set a new Memorial Day weekend domestic box office record with $156 million, giving Cruise the largest opening weekend of his career. The previous record was held for 15 years by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which earned $153 million. Maverick was aided by a better-than-expected turnout on Sunday that pushed the sequel’s three-day total to $126 million, a slight increase from the original estimate of $124 million.
Meanwhile, Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay—the widow and son of Ehud Yonay—have hit Paramount Pictures with a complaint filed in California federal court, arguing that the rights to the story were not reacquired before the movie was released.
Per ABC News, a cease-and-desist was sent to Paramount back in early May, but the company said the film had been complete since early 2020 and was not derivative of the article. The Yonays claim Top Gun: Maverick was not finished until May 2021, over a year after their rights to the original story expired for Paramount.
A spokesperson for the company says the claims “are without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”
