That ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ may win out over Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ for the weekend is a stinging indictment of supply not meeting demand.
In a bitterly ironic end to a profoundly undernourished summer movie season, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick may fail to top the box office in its 15th weekend of domestic release thanks to Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Brad Pitt’s Bullet Train may win out in the end. That it’s even a question or that there isn’t some new biggie being offered up this weekend is a statement. Sure, Labor Day isn’t a hot holiday weekend, but Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opened with $94 million last year. The ‘disappointing’ $9.4 million Fri-Sun opening of Chris Nolan’s Tenet, part of a long $20 million opening week in the summer of 2020, now again looks aspirational. Simply put, there’s no excuse for this circumstance.
It’s not unheard of for an earlier summer sensation like Top Gun 2 to return to the top of the box office late in the season. Forrest Gump topped on its ninth weekend on Labor Day 1994 on its way to $329 million domestic. In this case, it’s entirely due to the lack of high-profile theatrical products. For all the reasons we’ve discussed since February when The Batman was left to hold up the entire month of March all by itself, there haven’t been many new biggies since April of this year.
