Top Gun made 357 million dollars in 1986.
15 million dollars was the budget.
Adjusted for inflation, the box office was 913 million dollars today and 38.4 million dollars.
Comparing that, the new Top Gun has made 1.01 billion dollars so far, on a budget of 170 million.
So far, Top Gun Maverick has managed to do what very few sequels can do, which is make more post inflation, over the original movie.
Quick comparisons on that.
Independence Day 1996
817 million made
1.5 billion today
Independence Day 2
390 million made.
1.2 billion less post inflation.
Dumb & Dumber 1994
247 million made
486 million today
Dumb & Dumber To ”clever title”
170 million made.
316 million less than the original.
Most sequels that happen over a long period of time flop and it’s very rare to get a Mad Max Fury Road, Tron Legacy and in this case, a Top Gun Maverick.
To get an idea though on why it succeeded, I looked at it and think I found the following reasons.
First up, Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise while being a bit of a public joke, due to his personal life choices, he can drive money to movies.
9.5 billion dollars is the total box office of his movies, which doesn’t even factor inflation, which would likely put his total earnings to over 15 billion.
This largely being connected with the success of the Mission Impossible franchise, which is similar to Top Gun and have always delivered with the first film in 1996 making 457 million and the most recent making 791 million, which came out 22 years later in 2018.
He is one of the few actors who is an actual box office draw and it happened here.
Second, undeniable 80s nostalgia.
The most popular show of 2022 so far is the fourth season of Stranger Things, which entire setting is the 1980s.
Another hit series is Cobra Kai, following up the hit 1980s Karate Kid franchise.
There’s this love of the 1980s, which doesn’t seem to be declining and Top Gun benefited from that.
And third and final, large budget non superhero movie.
2022 opened up with Spiderman No Way Home being the highest grossing movie in January, even though it came out in December of 2021.
March was the Batman, which broke 700 million made.
April was Doctor Strange, which made 950 million and Thor 2 will likely be the highest grossing movie of July, with Black Adam set to take August.
There is a visible issue, where the larger budget movies seem concentrated with comic films and there might be some desire for people to see a larger budget film, that didn’t hit that genre.
Final thoughts
I’ve actually not seen the movie and didn’t really like the first one, but pretty cool it made this much.
I asked people what would be the highest grossing movie of 2022 and didn’t even put Top Gun Maverick in the list, thinking it’d have no shot.
Now with a few hundred million left to make, this will likely be in the top three, if not number one.