Why It Took Tom Cruise So Long To Make A Billion Dollar Movie

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Now that Top Gun: Maverick has finally given Tom Cruise his first billion-dollar movie, it is worth looking back on the star's career to discern why the achievement took so long. Top Gun: Maverick has proven a massive success since its May 27th, 2022 release date, with the long-awaited sequel impressing critics and audiences alike. Acknowledging the original Top Gun's silliness while maintaining a larger-than-life tone of its own, Top Gun: Maverick managed to find a delicate balance between blockbuster fun, 80's nostalgia, and fast-paced thrills.

As a result, the billion-dollar haul Top Gun: Maverick has now earned at the box office came as no surprise to many industry commentators. However, the long-delayed Top Gun: Maverick is the first Tom Cruise movie to cross the billion-dollar mark despite the actor's many successful hits over the years.

Related: Top Gun Maverick Theory: Cyclone Was In On Maverick's Test Run

Tom Cruise's earliest huge hit, Top Gun, earned over $350 million dollars (over $900 million in 2022 dollars adjusted for inflation). While he has since come close to repeating this incredible impact, expensive flops like 2017's misjudged Tom Cruise horror movie The Mummy dented the actor's box office acumen. The reliably successful Mission Impossible series has gradually grown more and more impressive over the years, but even its biggest box office success was 2018's Mission Impossible: Fallout. With a haul of $790 million dollars, that sequel's performance was impressive but a far cry from Top Gun: Maverick's take and remained Cruise's best box-office performance (apart from an inflation-adjusted Top Gun) until the much-vaunted sequel's 2022 arrival.

While Cruise has a hugely successful blockbuster career,