Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ May Benefit From A Christmas Release (Box Office)

Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick will challenge Dune for the Christmas box office crown.

Of all the many, many delayed films that were supposed to come out between March and July, the one that might end up most benefiting from the release date change is Paramount and Skydance’s Top Gun: Maverick. The Tom Cruise sequel, directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion and Only the Brave), was initially slated for June 26. Paramount will now open the film on December 23, which is the Wednesday before Christmas. Instead of being just one summer biggie positioned alongside Jon M. Chu’s In the Heights and between Soul and Minions: The Rise of Gru, it’s now the potential event movie of the year-end holiday blitz alongside, ironically, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Heck, even if by some miracle Denis Villeneuve’s Dune really proves to be this year’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Top Gun: Maverick can be the year’s Jack Reacher.

The word around the campfire is that the Top Gun sequel is mostly finished, and that the film is proceeding as if it were still going to open on June 26. That makes sense since, come what may, it was initially (once upon a time) intended to open last June. It was one of a handful of major 2019 titles that ended up (be it correlation or causation) getting out of the way of the oncoming Disney
DIS
tsunami. How different this coronavirus conversation might have been had Wonder Woman 1984, No Time to Die, Death on the Nile and Top Gun: Maverick opened in 2019 as initially intended, but I digress. Anyway, as regular readers know, the two-week stretch where kids are off school and adults are somewhat off work for Christmas and New Year’s (and, uh, not quarantined) is a famously lucrative one.

Jack Reacher legged to $80 million domestic from a $15 million pre-Christmas debut in 2012. Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol legged out to $209 million domestic from an $80 million ten-day opening frame (the first five days, Fri-Tues, were IMAX
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only, with the film opening everywhere on Wednesday of that week). I don’t expect Top Gun: Maverick to replicate M:I 4’s ”IMAX only early release” strategy, because WB’s Dune might take issue. That Kosinski’s aerial actioner was partially shot with “IMAX-certified digital cameras” means it likely has dibs on the format over the holiday. This should also scare off the likes of WB’s Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984 should they too need new dates. This Christmas will have Free Guy on December 11, Dune, Coming 2 America and West Side Story on December 18 and Top Gun: Maverick on December 23.

If the movie is any good, and I’m hoping for the tech wizardy of Tron: Legacy with the character-driven melodrama of Only the Brave, it could easily leg out over the holiday alongside the Spielberg musical, the Eddie Murphy comedy and the fantasy spectacle. Its original release date, while intended to be carried along in weekend two by the July 4th holiday frame (as was the case for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2009), would have almost immediately sent it up against Ghostbusters: Afterlife (more 80’s nostalgia), Tenet (Chris Nolan’s time-travel spy epic) and Jungle Cruise. If Top Gun 2 flourishes in late December, it (alongside No Time to Die starting on Thanksgiving) will have the the run of the table until, at worst, Mortal Kombat on January 15 if not Eternals in early February.

Dune could overcome its hurdles (a famously cold/clinical filmmaker delivering a big-budget adaptation of a cult sci-fi novel that is famously immersed in world-building minutia) and become the event movie of the season. Top Gun: Maverick is a more “known” offering and presumably an easier “group consensus” pick. It even has not just an IP but a flagship actor+character “movie star as its marquee protagonist, which is why the film is called Top Gun: Maverick instead of Top Gun 2. The good news is that there will be room at Christmas for both biggies, and both films are arguably positioned in the best date for them to concurrently break out. Top Gun 2 in late summer would have been a giant among giants. But Top Gun 2 opening this Christmas makes it potentially the biggest fish in a very big pond.