'Top Gun: Maverick' Maintains US Box Office Peak With $86M In Ticket Sales

“Top Gun: Maverick” maintained its domination of the U.S. box office, grossing $86 million over the weekend from 4,751 theaters.

What Happened: Paramount Global’s PARAA Tom Cruise-starring film has grossed $291.6 million from the domestic box office after two weeks in theatrical release; it also earned $81.7 million from overseas markets, bringing its accumulative global total to $548.6 million. In comparison, the weekend’s second top grossing film, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” from the Walt Disney Co. DIS, brought in $9.25 million from 3,765 theaters over the weekend while accumulating a total of $388.7 million from a five-week theatrical release.

Rounding out the top five films from the weekend box office rankings were “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” from Disney’s 20th Century Studios, with $4.5 million from 3,425 screens; “The Bad Guys” from Comcast Corp.’s CMCSA Universal Pictures, with $3.34 million from 2,869 screens; “Downton Abbey: A New Era” from Comcast’s Focus Features, which took in $3 million from 3,451 theaters.

What Happens Next: The big question for the coming weekend is whether “Top Gun: Maverick” gets shot down by the next blockbuster event: Universal’s “Jurassic World: Dominion,” which reunites Chris Pratt and friends with their dinosaur nemeses.

With “Jurassic World: Dominion” and “Top Gun: Maverick” battling for the box office peak, it is no surprise that the weekend’s other new titles are under-the-radar limited release offerings: Shout! Studios’ biopic “I’m Charlie Walker,” starring Mike Colter as a groundbreaking Black environmentally-focused entrepreneur in the early 1970s, and Music Box Films' “Lost Illusions,” the Cesar Award-winning French drama based on the Honoré de Balzac’s 19th century novel.

Also Worth Noting: One of the most sought-after Asian science-fiction films will soon make its long-overdue U.S. home entertainment release.

The 1967 South Korean “Space Monster Wangmagwi” was a Seoul-based science-fiction film that was heavily inspired by classic monster movies including “King Kong” and “Godzilla.” The film was never theatrically released outside of Korea, but over the years it gained a reputation for being one of the earliest examples of kaiju filmmaking to take root beyond Japan.

The film’s lack of availability inspired the belief that it was lost, but materials survived in the Korean Film Archive.

SRS Cinema, an independent distribution company based in Syracuse, New York, has licensed the film for U.S. home entertainment release. No premiere date has been announced yet – but as they say in the sci-fi world, keep watching the skies!

Photo: Tom Cruise in "Top Gun: Maverick," courtesy of Paramount