“Top Gun: Maverick” flew high again at the domestic box office this weekend with one of the strongest second-week performances ever, in a sign that the broad, casual audiences of prepandemic times might be returning to theaters.
The sequel to the 1986 classic featuring Tom Cruise as a veteran fighter pilot raked in an estimated $86 million in the US and Canada this weekend, following a record-breaking debut over the Memorial Day weekend of $156 million. The figure is unusually strong for the second weekend of a high-grossing film, suggesting that a swath of moviegoers is returning to the theaters following a two-year drought caused by the pandemic.
