Box office balls of fire! Will Smith could soon be unseated as the highest-paid actor for a single movie.
With global ticket sales of more than $280 million in just three days, the long-awaited (and Covid-delayed) Top Gun: Maverick is not only thrilling Hollywood with hope that movie theaters are out of the pandemic danger zone, it has put Tom Cruise on a flight path to what seemed impossible just 12 months ago: setting a fresh record for the biggest-ever payday for an actor. The sequel to the 1986 Top Gun is already the biggest opening weekend in the star’s more than 40 year career and if it maintains momentum could land him more than $100 million — as first reported by Puck News – a sum no one has even come close to on a single film since the start of the streaming wars. The haul would best Keanu Reeves, who reportedly netted more than $83 million for each film in the Matrix trilogy —which debuted in 1999—and pulled in a total of $250 million earned from a combined box office pot of $1.6 billion. Will Smith holds the record for the best payday from a single movie, reportedly taking home $100 million for his third turn protecting the galaxy in 2012’s Men In Black threequel, which took in $624 million worldwide.
“If [Top Gun] makes $1 billion worldwide,” one entertainment attorney tells Forbes, “nine figures doesn’t sound looney tunes.”
Cruise, 59, is often referred to as one of Hollywood’s last true movie stars. Today he is something of a unicorn due to his longstanding command of first-dollar gross on a film’s backend, the kind of lucrative deal once common for A-list stars that was abandoned when streaming services supplanted traditional movie studios as the driving force in Hollywood.
