Top Gun: Maverick is on track to soar past Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness at the global box office.

The Tom Cruise vehicle has raked in $901.8 million so far and shows no signs of slowing down, according to data obtained by Variety. This is enough to establish Top Gun: Maverick as 2022's second-highest-grossing movie worldwide. It also puts the belated sequel within spitting distance of the $943 million haul of current international box office champion Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. If ticket sales continue at the same rate, Top Gun: Maverick will fly into the top spot in only a few weeks.

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Like Cruise's test pilot protagonist Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Top Gun: Maverick has been breaking records since it raced into theaters on May 27, 2022. Early estimates pegged its opening day earnings at $51 million, making it Paramount Pictures' biggest ever opening. Top Gun: Maverick also quickly set its sights on replacing Mission: Impossible – Fallout as the film responsible for Cruise's most successful opening weekend.

By June 2022, the high-flying action blockbuster had grossed over $400 million at the domestic box office. This was enough for Top Gun: Maverick to dethrone Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as the highest-grossing movie of the year in the US. It also positioned Top Gun: Maverick alongside another Marvel Studios film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, as the only films to generate more than $400 million domestically since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

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More recently, Top Gun Maverick set a major box office record that not even Marvel Studios has achieved. The sequel posted $44 million in domestic ticket sales following its fourth weekend in theaters. Only three other movies have previously grossed more than $40 million a month after opening: Avatar ($50.3 million), Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($42.4 million) and Black Panther ($40.8 million). Top Gun: Maverick's fourth weekend earnings are the second highest of all time, behind Avatar and well ahead of Marvel Studios' Black Panther.

The action epic's ongoing box office success has even left Paramount unsure of when to end its theatrical run. Paramount President and CEO of Streaming Tom Ryan recently admitted the studio still hasn't decided when Top Gun: Maverick will start streaming on Paramount+. According to Ryan, while Paramount's recent strategy of giving films a 45-day theatrical window before making them available has been a "great success" for certain movies, this model is less well suited to Top Gun: Maverick.

Top Gun: Maverick is currently in cinemas.

Source: Variety