Tom Cruise has plenty of reason to celebrate after it was unveiled Top Gun: Maverick has reportedly brought in $1.2 billion (£1 billion).
The actor, who previously admitted he doubted whether he would make a sequel of the iconic 1986 film, will be sure to rave about its performance.
At $600 million (£500 million) domestically in the US, it has become Paramount’s highest-grossing film of all time, according to Term.
It’s also the Tom’s first movie to reach the lofty heights of $1 billion.
For the film’s huge success, Tom actually had to be convinced that making one more was a good idea from director Joseph Kosinski.
The director explained, “So I read the script, I had some ideas, and Jerry (Bruckheimer) loved those ideas. He said, “You know what, you should pitch this directly to Tom.”
He flew to Paris to meet Cruise on a film set where he was shooting one of his Mission: Impossible films and was given 30 minutes to convince the actor to return to Fightertown.
He had a challenge in his hands because he found Tom was unimpressed at first.
Kosinki added to polygon“We flew to Paris where Tom was filming Mission: Impossible, we got about half an hour of his time between setups.
“And I actually had 30 minutes to pitch this movie, which I didn’t realize when we flew over. But when I got there, I found that Tom really didn’t want to make another Top Gun.
“It’s one of those moments as a director, you have one on every movie, where you’re on the scene arguing why this movie needs to be made. I had 30 minutes to do it.’
The pitch was successful, and by the end of the meeting, Cruise had told the movie bosses he’d like to come back. So much so, he “picked up the phone, called the head of Paramount Pictures and said, ‘We’re making another Top Gun.'”
In the film, Tom’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell returns as a plucky test pilot for his biggest mission yet – reuniting along the way with some familiar faces, including Val Kilmer’s Iceman.
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