Top Gun Maverick expected to be Tom Cruise’s career-best opener with expected opening weekend earnings of $125 million

As per trade reports, Tom Cruise's upcoming film Top Gun: Maverick could end up registering the biggest opening by any film of his career.

Despite his stardom, Tom has never had a film gross over $100 million on the opening weekend. But reports say that Maverick may just change that. Some estimates claim that the film could end up making $125 million in its opening weekend in the domestic market alone. 

According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, "Top Gun 2 is easily headed for the biggest opening of Tom Cruise's career at the domestic box office, with a four-day gross of at least $92 million, according to official tracking. And that's a conservative estimate. Many pundits believe the critically acclaimed sequel could soar well north of $100 million domestically, but tracking — one of Hollywood's favourite pastimes — has become fraught in the pandemic era. Exhibitors are especially bullish on the pic, and are even thinking $125 million-plus."

As of now, the biggest opening of any Tom Cruise film has been the $64.9 million earned by his 2005 film War of the Worlds. Even Mission Impossible: Fallout--which is his highest-grossing film at $787 million--opened to a relatively low $61 million in 2012. But what works for Maverick is that it is opening on Thursday in many markets around the world. If the $125 million projection holds true, Maverick will have the third-best opening for any movie this year.

Such high openings are usually reserved for superhero films, which is why industry pundits are taking these projections with a pinch of salt. The only other movies so far this year that have opened that high or higher are DC's The Batman with $134 million and Marvel Studios' Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with $187 million.

Top Gun: Maverick is the sequel to Tom's 1986 hit Top Gun. The film was largely responsible for establishing him as a bankable star as it earned $357 million on a $15 million budget. Maverick sees him reprise his role of Naval aviator Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell. The Joseph Kosinski film also stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, and Lewis Pullman. Val Kilmer, who had a supporting role in the original, also returns. The film releases on 27 May.