Paramount and Tom Cruise’s “Top: Gun Maverick” is, without question, the box-office winner of the year so far.
With $617 million domestic and $1.2 billion so far worldwide, and with unanimous critical and audience love, the film has been praised for reigniting the box office in the wake of the pandemic.
But Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group co-presidents Sanford Panitch and Josh Greenstein, speaking with Vulture this week, say Sony Pictures deserves a big bunch of credit for bring audiences back to the theater during the pandemic.
Specifically they’ve had four key victories since last Fall – “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” ($506M worldwide), “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” ($204M worldwide), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.9B worldwide), and “Uncharted” ($401M worldwide) – which they see as paving the way for Maverick’s success:
Greenstein: “When we first started releasing movies last October, there were really no other big movies. Everyone had pushed their big movies to this year, to this summer. We took a big gamble putting ‘Venom’ in theaters. Then we doubled down with ‘Ghostbusters.’ Then our biggest bet was when every other tentpole had fled, we tripled down with ‘Spider-Man’ – our biggest, most important piece of IP.”
Panitch: “There’s so much press about ‘Top Gun’ right now. It’s like, ‘The movie business is back!’. In a weird way, I would say ‘Top Gun’ is benefitting from us taking our shot. ‘Venom’ is the start of that story that allows ‘Top Gun’ to do the kind of business it did. These things don’t happen overnight. It’s a seeding.”
Sony will next be releasing “Bullet Train” which stars Brad Pitt and marks the only major studio action tentpole releasing next month – on August 5th.
