Tom Cruise was the top gun during the four-day Memorial Day weekend. Top Gun: Maverick flew high in the box office stratosphere, becoming the biggest Memorial Day opening in history and the biggest bow in the actor’s career.

Thirty-six years after the original helped solidify Tom’s movie star status, the Top Gun sequel grabbed $156 million during the 4-day holiday weekend and beat Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’s Memorial Day weekend record.

In a very encouraging sign of the summer domestic box office season, the Joseph Kosinski-directed action-drama – also starring Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Jon Hamm, and Val Kilmer – performed even better than expected. Older moviegoers, who have been hesitant to troop back to the cineplexes, made up more than half of the movie’s ticket buyers.

Top Gun 2 is also drawing younger audiences, attributed to the appeal of the film’s spectacular airborne stunts, enthusiastic movie reviews, and word-of-mouth buzz.

The record-breaking debut of Maverick is a big payoff for Paramount which delayed the film’s release due to the COVID-19 pandemic and persisted on a theatrical, not streaming, release.

“That was not going to happen ever. That was never going to happen,” Tom answered when asked, in a MasterClass Conversation with the star at the recent Cannes Film Festival, if he was pressured to release Maverick on a streaming platform.

The record-breaking bow of the film showcasing aerial action means we are “officially in the realm of consistent momentum, or at least in the realm of normalcy at the box office,” analyst Paul Dergarabedian was quoted as saying by axios.com.

In other box office developments in the United States and Canada, Doctor Strange finally dropped to second place amid Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s landing. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, for now the biggest box office grosser of 2022, collected a four-day holiday total of $21.1 million.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie debuted in third place with $15 million. Based on the TV series, Bob’s Burgers, the animated musical comedy film taps the original voice cast, including Zach Galifianakis, H. Jon Benjamin, Kristen Schaal, Dan Mintz, Kevin Kline, Eugene Mirman, and Larry Murphy.

Downton Abbey: A New Era ($7.5 million) and The Bad Guys ($6.1 million) ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, after the four-day totals were tallied.

Comprising the rest of the top ten were, in order: Everything Everywhere All at Once, $3.189 million; Sonic the Hedgehog 2, $3.12 million; The Lost City, $2.3 million; Men (Alex Garland’s folk horror drama), $1.53 million; and F3: Fun and Frustration (an Indian Telugu-language comedy), $1.2 million.

Internationally, Maverick became the actor’s biggest opener in more than 60 territories. Even without the benefit of a release in China and Russia, the San Diego, California-set movie scored $124 million. Combined with its domestic earnings, the film drew global ticket sales of more than $248 million.

The follow-up to the 1986 original performed especially well in France, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Middle East, Netherlands, Argentina, Belgium, Portugal, and Finland.

Even as Tom’s blockbuster impacted their offshore ticket sales, several movies are nearing or are approaching milestones: Multiverse of Madness ($500 million), Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore ($300 million), and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($200 million).

Looking ahead, Hollywood is counting on other coming releases to continue the box office momentum launched by Tom’s fighter jets: Chris Pratt’s Jurassic World Dominion, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, and Jordan Peele’s Nope.