Top Gun: Maverick has made its way into the domestic box office Top 5 for the fifteenth time in its unstoppable run. Top Gun: Maverick, which was released in theaters on May 27, is a legacy sequel to the 1986 megahit Top Gun, bringing back Tom Cruise as the hotshot fighter pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. This time, he is tasked with training a new group of young elite pilots to pull off a seemingly impossible mission, including Rooster Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick's fallen comrade Goose, who blames him for his father's death. The ensemble cast of the propulsive action film also includes Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, and Val Kilmer returning as Iceman.
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Top Gun: Maverick has taken every single one of its box office expectations and blown them completely out of the water with a run that has only been outmatched in the pandemic era by the Marvel crossover sequel Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021. The film opened to a whopping $126.7 million, and before this weekend had already risen to a record-shattering worldwide total of $1.44 billion. Unusually for an action film, the proportion of domestic to international box office is nearly equal, with its $702.4 million domestic take currently making it the fifth highest-grossing domestic film of all time, just ahead of Marvel's Black Panther.
Per Variety, both of the new wide-release films, Zach Cregger's Airbnb horror flick Barbarian and the Hindi fantasy actioner BrahmÄstra: Part One – Shiva, took the #1 and #2 slots respectively in the domestic box office this weekend. However, Top Gun: Maverick is holding strong and taking #4, just behind Bullet Train, with a weekend gross of about $3 million. This will make it the fifteenth weekend that the film has maintained a position in the Top 5, only briefly slipping into the #6 position on the weekend that Bullet Train originally premiered.
Top Gun: Maverick's weekend box office takes are certainly slowing down compared to the first phase of its run. However, it is still such a strong draw that it rose to #1 on Labor Day weekend, more than two months after its original release. Even if it may not be able to make enough to match Avatar's $760 million and knock it down the chart, it could very well maintain its streak in the Top 5 for even longer.
Top Gun: Maverick will be facing some stiff competition in the coming weeks, however. The buzzy Don't Worry Darling may prove to be a contender on September 23 as folks head to the theaters to check out the film that has been at the center of so many tabloid scandals, followed by a double-header of Smile and Bros the following weekend that may threaten to knock it out of the Top 5 for good. However, the film has proven time and again that it's not wise to bet against Maverick, so it remains to be seen.