Top Gun: Maverick has surged past a box office record set by blockbuster superhero movie Avengers: Infinity War.
At this point it really can't be denied that Top Gun: Maverick has been a wildly successful movie that has flown far beyond all expectations.
We thought at best we'd get a really enjoyable sequel to the classic 1986 movie with some exciting fighter jet action and Tom Cruise doing his mega-money movie star thing.
What we got was an amazing film, the sort that wows critics and packs out cinemas full of people who end up glad they paid the cost of admission.
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Speaking of packing out cinemas, Top Gun: Maverick has developed a habit of smashing box office records on the way to becoming Tom Cruise's most successful movie ever.
It broke the $1bn barrier back in June and now the film has etched itself into box office folklore for yet another reason.
Still going strong at the US box office weeks after it first landed in cinemas, Top Gun: Maverick just surpassed Avengers: Infinity War in all-time overall box office takings for America.
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The film has earned over $679m, just squeezing beyond Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut Infinity War on around $678m to claim sixth spot in the US lifetime box office.
That's some achievement considering the top spots are dominated by Marvel's roster of superhero movies, with half of the top 10 movies at the US box office being theirs.
How much further the film can go is anyone's guess, but it will need to find about another $20m in takings to leapfrog Black Panther in fifth place.
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To get any further up the table than that, Top Gun: Maverick would then need to earn $60m more on top to surpass Avatar, and then make another $44m to crack the top three.
It seems unlikely that a film which has been in cinemas for months already will be able to keep going for that long and continue taking so much cash, but beating Infinity War at the box office is nothing to be sniffed at.
Those top spots are occupied by Spider-Man: No Way Home ($804m), Avengers: Endgame ($858m) and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (a whopping $936m).
To date no movie has cracked the billion-dollar barrier in the US market alone, and it took reviving Star Wars to get within touching distance of doing so.
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Topics: Tom Cruise, Film and TV, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, US News
Joe Harker