‘Top Gun: Maverick’ rides high on second weekend at UK-Ireland box office with £10.3m haul

Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick has maintained an impressive altitude at the UK box office, slipping just 8% on its second weekend of release for a huge £10.3m haul between Friday and Sunday.

Benefitting from strong word-of-mouth, the Top Gun sequel has now generated a box office total of £38.4m – easily eclipsing after just two weekends the total takings of £30.6m for War of the Worlds, which was Tom Cruise’s previous highest grossing film in the UK.

It has also smashed the performance of the original Top Gun, which was the highest-grossing title of 1986 in the UK and Ireland, taking £8.5m – the equivalent to £20.6m in 2021.

Top Gun: Maverick’s second weekend was buoyed by the four-day Jubilee bank holiday in the UK, which began on Thursday – giving it a strong lead into the weekend. Rival studios also withheld major releases for fear of competing against Top Gun: Maverick in its second weekend.

The film’s small 8% weekend-on-weekend decline compares well to other big budget tentpoles released in the UK. Last month, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness fell 62% in its second weekend.

Top Gun: Maverick played at 750 locations, generating an average of £13,733 per location.

Disney’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness held on to second place after five weeks on release. The Marvel superhero film grossed £1.15m, down 16%, to report a total of £40.7m.

Among other holdovers, two animations – Paramount’s Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and Universal’s The Bad Guys – jumped back into the UK top five at the box office, buoyed by the fact that schools were out for half-term.

In its 10th week, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 played at 590 sites and took £455,000 – a rise of 62% on the previous weekend. The film’s total now stands at £26.2m.

The Bad Guys scored an impressive £401,112 for a running total of £12.9m after ten weeks.

Elsewhere, A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once added £370,968 for a cume of £3.85m

Universal sequel Downton Abbey: A New Era grossed £230,369 over the weekend, lifting its cume to £14.m on its sixth week of release.

Elsewhere, Disney’s The Bob’s Burger Movie dropped 45% on its second weekend, generating £191,863 for a cume of £907,719.

Paramount’s The Lost City also grew its box office. After eight weeks on release, the Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum-starrer took £160,000, up 14%, for a total of £10.5m.

New openers

The weekend’s widest new opening was Alex Garland’s horror Men, which was released through Entertainment Film Distributors on 571 screens. The Jessie Buckley, Paapa Essiedu and Rory Kinnear starring film took £315,950 over the three day weekend, rising to £519,908 including previews.

Sony put out Telugu-language Indian action drama Major in 75 sites, generating £55,000 over the weekend. The film is based on the life of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was killed during the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Mubi’s release of Mia Hansen-Love’s Cannes 2021 competition title Bergman Island, which played in 50 locations, took £21,201 over the weekend. With previews, its total is £34,990.

Trafalgar Releasing booked the live performance of the Metropolitan Opera in New York’s Hamlet into 135 venues on Saturday (June 4), with a further six showing a delayed performance. Its current box office stands at £24,942 with a number of reports still to come.

BFI Distribution re-release of Robert Bresson’s 1959 French title Pickpocket took £4,662 from eight sites.

Signature Entertainment’s footballer biopic I Am Zlatan brought in £157 from eight sites this weekend, before going wider to 76 more next week.

Some box office results to follow.  

• ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ chomps off $55m box office in early markets