Top Gun: Maverick is still soaring across the skies and continues its successful box office run. Tom Cruise is enjoying a career high as we speak as Top Gun: Maverick broke the 700 Million dollar ceiling. Despite a plethora of movies like Moonfall and Morbius being ravaged by the critics, Top Gun: Maverick still enjoys unanimously positive vibes from both critics and audiences alike. Not even Spider-Man: No Way Home had enjoyed this level of success. Top Gun: Maverick is working well, too well to be frank when it comes to box office numbers.
The reason is pretty simple – Top Gun: Maverick’s marketing team are a band of geniuses who campaigned this movie to be targeted at very specific customer segments. The Gen X and Millennial generation is the reason Tom Cruise became a Box Office God.
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Here’s how.
Top Gun: Maverick Continues To Break Box Office Records
At the time of this writing, the Tom Cruise starrer is still setting screens on fire and attracting flocks of viewers. The movie made history by crossing the highest Memorial Day weekend collection record set by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’. Even the movie’s 3 day opening raked in a whopping $126.7 Million, the 4th highest collection for a movie ever since the pandemic lockdown ended in the US and the theaters opened.
The movie’s box office collection now sits at north of $700 Million at global box office. It is Tom Cruise’s highest grossing opening weekend movie as well. With one of the smallest week on week drops ever recorded for a movie above $100 Million collection, Top Gun: Maverick is still going strong. One more epic record is that Top Gun: Maverick is now Tom Cruise’s biggest ever movie, having absolutely decimated the box office with herculean earnings. Fans are saying Top Gun: Maverick could be Tom Cruise’s first ever movie to enter the coveted billion dollar club.
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Top Gun: Maverick Was A Success Because Of Millennials and Gen X
Now let’s get to the number crunching part. Paramount has released the official demographics count for the viewers of Top Gun: Maverick. At more than 55% of the viewers who watched the movie were from ages above 35. That age group has always been the silent majority for most of the blockbuster movies released earlier this year. The Batman had only 31% of the ‘Above 35’ age group demographics as its viewer base. Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible:Fallout had a whopping 37% count from the same demographic.
It proves one thing. Tom Cruise is a hit amongst not just the ladies but also with older generations. Paramount was right to bank on these numbers for a ‘go hard or go home’ approach. Moviegoers who watched Top Gun in 1986 would definitely be the ones who would come to watch Maverick take to the skies again. Those people would definitely be either in the bracket of early thirties and early fifties.
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These people have fond memories of the original Tony Scott film. Paramount’s strategy to bank on Gen X and Millennial nostalgia is something Universal could have definitely learned from in Jurassic World Dominion.
Even The Gen Z Love Tom Cruise But In Smaller Numbers
That is not to say that Tom Cruise is not a hit with the Gen Z folks. They too came in herds to watch Top Gun: Maverick. But their numbers were smaller compared to the Gen X and Millennial viewers for the same movie. According to Paramount’s official numbers, only 215 of its total viewers for Top Gun: Maverick were within the age group of 18-24.
Experts claim that the reason Top Gun: Maverick attracted such comparatively impressive Gen Z numbers is because of its post release success. Critical reviews and fan reviews being so great for a movie in a post pandemic era is no easy feat. The Gen Z did contribute to Top Gun: Maverick’s success but the Gen X and Millennials is how the movie became decimated the box office numbers.
Hollywood. Take note. We are here to stay.
