Top Gun: Maverick soars past $1 billion worldwide - a first for Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise’s smash hit sequel to the cult classic Top Gun has earned him his first $1 billion movie.

Top Gun: Maverick pass the mark on Sunday with an estimated domestic total of $521.7 million and $484.7 million overseas, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

Part of this can be credited to a boost from its rerelease in select Imax and other premium large-format screens, which helped the Paramount and Skydance release gross and additional $30.5 million domestically and $44.5 million overseas.

More than 16% of Top Gun 2′s audience has seen the film more than once in theaters, while 4 percent have seen it four times or more, according to Paramount.

Top Gun: Maverick is the 50th Hollywood movie overall to hit $1 billion, not adjusted for inflation, and the second during the pandemic behind Sony and Disney’s Spider Man: No Way Home ($1.89 billion).

Both Spider Man and Top Gun were not released in China due to patriotic American content.

The China Film Administration, who reviews films before they are released in the country, rejected Spider Man after Sony and Marvel Studios refused to delete scenes that include the Statue of Liberty, according to Puck.

Chinese tech giant Tencent backed out of Cruise’s sequel over fears that Communist Party officials would be angry about the company’s affiliation with a movie celebrating the American military, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Proof was scene in the opening of Top Gun’s theatrical release, which restored Taiwanese and Japanese flags that were censored from Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s leather jacket in the original 2019 trailer.

The original Top Gun was the highest-grossing film of 1986, earning $357.3 million worldwide against a production budget of $15 million.