Top Gun: Maverick Joins Elite Club

Top Gun: Maverick has now made more than $1 billion worldwide at the box office, one of just 50 movies (not adjusted for inflation) to have ever done so, according to Paramount. It's the studio's second-highest-grossing movie ever domestically, behind 1997's Titanic, CNN reports. It's also Tom Cruise's first film to cross the $1 billion mark. "It's rare to get the special kind of alchemy that creates a true event film, and we have been absolutely blown away by the global response," Brian Robbins, Paramount Pictures' president and CEO, says in a statement.

Just one other film has made more than $1 billion in the pandemic era of movie-going, December's Spider-Man: No Way Home. A senior media analyst tells CNN that making that much amid COVID concerns that have vastly impacted the film industry is even more impressive. "It was the perfect movie at the perfect time because it starred one of Hollywood's last movie stars, in a movie that delivered on all fronts to all audiences around the world," he says. Adds the film's director, Joseph Kosinski, per Deadline, "The enthusiasm from fans around the world has shown us there is no replacement for watching a movie in a packed theater." (More Tom Cruise stories.)