The battle of this weekend’s box office is being comfortably won by Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which is poised to double the opening weekend take of Idris Elba taking on a lion in the demented B-tier thriller Beast, but once again the headlines are being stolen by Top Gun: Maverick.
Now in its 13th week of release, the aerial extravaganza has now passed the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers: Infinity War to become the sixth-biggest domestic hit of all-time. In a further twist of delicious irony, Maverick is also now the 13th highest-grossing film in history having reached $679 million on home soil and over $700 million overseas, proving that the unlucky number doesn’t mean a damn thing to Tom Cruise and the rest of the hotshot pilots.
While Dragon Ball Super should be commended for rocketing out of the blocks to head towards an estimated $23 million bow, with Beast miles behind on its way to a projected $10 million, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t surprised the biggest story coming out of the Saturday numbers is Maverick once again.
After all, Joseph Kosinski’s sequel has been absolutely unstoppable since hitting theaters at the end of May, with even the most optimistic of predictions a million miles wide of the mark as it closes in on an astonishing $1.4 billion. Cruise will do his damndest to ensure that the top-earning movie of his entire career will be exclusive to the multiplex for as long as possible, which is fair enough when it continues to topple records left, right, and center.