‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Will Return to Theaters for 2 Weeks

Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” the biggest box office hit of 2022, will be returning to theaters for a two-week engagement starting this Friday ahead of its release on Paramount+.

Paramount announced the re-release on Tuesday, with the film heading back to the big screen on Dec. 2 and running until Dec. 15, the day before Disney/20th Century’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” is set to make its theatrical debut and one week before “Maverick” makes its streaming debut on Paramount+ on Dec. 22.

“’Top Gun: Maverick’ truly epitomizes the magic of the moviegoing experience, and we wanted to provide fans the opportunity to once again enjoy this cinematic spectacle as it was meant to be seen,” said Chris Aronson, president of Domestic Distribution for Paramount Pictures. “This feels like the perfect time to bring ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ back to theaters so audiences everywhere can once again experience how special this film is.”

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With $1.48 billion grossed worldwide and a Paramount-record $716 million grossed in North America, “Top Gun: Maverick” stands among the top 5 highest grossing films in domestic box office history and No. 11 on the all-time global charts before inflation adjustment. After setting a new opening weekend record for Memorial Day weekend, it stayed in the top five on the box office charts for the remainder of the summer and is one of only three films, along with “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Jurassic World: Dominion” to hit the $1 billion global mark since the pandemic began.

With Best Picture Oscar buzz now simmering around the Tom Cruise blockbuster, “Top Gun: Maverick” will be returning to theaters at a time when the box office is still struggling and relying on Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” to keep it from falling back into the deep slump it struggled through in August and September.

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Historically, early December has been a dry period for new theatrical releases, as studios reserve their big end-of-year films for closer to Christmas. The only wide release coming out from a major studio over the next two weekends is Universal’s “Violent Night,” an R-rated, Christmas-themed action comedy hitting theaters this Friday.

With this lack of new material, Netflix’s “Glass Onion” leaving theaters on Thursday and other Thanksgiving releases like Disney’s “Strange World” leaving little mark on the charts, Paramount is seeing an opportunity to pad the theatrical run of its biggest box office hit since “Titanic” before it finally begins its run on streaming seven months after its initial release.