Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 box office hit about jet pilots, had generated NT$453 million (US$15.24 million) at the box office in Taiwan as of Friday, making it the US actor’s highest-grossing film in the domestic market.
The film, which opened at local theaters on May 25, surpassed Cruise’s record-grossing 2018 movie Mission: Impossible — Fallout, which earned NT$447 million, the film’s distributor said yesterday.
Top Gun: Maverick is to be shown in IMAX and 4DX theaters this week, said VieShow Cinemas, a movie distribution company and one of the nation’s largest theater chains.
Photo: CNA
IMDb’s Box Office Mojo showed that the action-drama film has so far grossed more than US$918 million globally since its worldwide debut late last month.
In 2019, a trailer was released showing a scene in which Cruise wears the iconic bomber jacket his character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, donned in Top Gun.
In the first film, the back of the jacket included a patch that displayed the flags of the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan, which were meant to commemorate the USS Galveston’s tour of duty with the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet from 1963 to 1964, when it performed missions off Japan and Taiwan.
Photo: CNA
In the 2019 trailer, both flags were replaced with generic symbols with colors similar to the flags on the original patch.
Foreign media reports at the time said that the flags were allegedly removed to appease Chinese censors, and also because Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings was initially set to back the US$170 million film.
However, the Wall Street Journal late last month reported that Tencent had pulled out over concerns that supporting a film celebrating the US military could anger Beijing, and both flags were subsequently restored to the jacket in the film’s official release.
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