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Top Gun: Maverick has soared past $639 million at the U.S. box office, surpassing Titanic’s first-run release as the highest-grossing domestic film in Paramount’s history, and its worldwide gross is a whopping $1.292 billion and climbing. And though it’s easy to point to the movie’s greatness as the reason it took expectations to new heights, that’s not the full story.
In fact, the film wasn’t always cleared for takeoff.
When Tom Cruise first hit the stage at San Diego Comic-Con to reveal the trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, the audience ate it up: There was thunderous applause, overwhelmingly positive feedback and anticipation couldn’t be higher. Unfortunately, that was back in 2019.
Thanks to the pandemic, the movie—which initially was set to open in June 2020—was delayed several times before finally getting a release date in May 2022. And the marketing team had to be ready to drudge up excitement for a film originally set to premiere years prior.
“It’s not that we scrapped stuff, it was more of what was timely,” Marc Weinstock, president of worldwide marketing and distribution for Paramount Pictures, told Adweek. “At one point, we’re opening during the holidays, and we had a plan to do stuff in the fall, involving different things that were timely in that window. So we just sort of adapted to, ‘OK, we’re going in May. What big events can we be a part of?'”
The media and entertainment conglomerate set out to execute a dynamic, cross-company campaign, leveraging leading TV brands in the portfolio, franchises and IP.
“We just aimed to be everywhere we could,” Weinstock said.
Among the executions across the Paramount portfolio, Tom Cruise filmed a highly-produced pre-game feature for the NFL’s AFC Championship on CBS in January; Lady Gaga’s video for Hold My Hand from the film’s soundtrack debuted on MTV, MTV Live, MTVU and Paramount’s Times Square billboards in New York; Pluto TV had Tom Cruise marathons with rotations of promos and behind-the-scenes interstitials; Survivor host Jeff Probst gave a voice-over intercut for the film during the season finale; Paramount+ featured a Tom Cruise carousel highlighting the actor’s films; and talent participated in March Madness brackets, which were featured on CBS’ social media channels.
Plus, Late Late Show host James Corden took to the skies to fly with Cruise in a viral sketch that became the talk of the internet days ahead of the film’s release.
The campaign was all about ubiquity, explained Josh Line, evp and chief brand officer for Paramount Global: “That’s one of the things that’s sort of our portfolio of networks of streaming services and social footprint can bring to the table.”
But there was a method to the marketing madness.
“We were very conscious of reaching that younger audience, and that’s why you hear MTV coming up for social. It was also a key part of the media plan with MTV and Comedy Central. We have networks that over-index in reaching younger audiences, and we certainly tapped into that in building out the block and tackle of the media plan,” Line said.
Getting the word out
Though Gen X and millennials might have nostalgia for the original Top Gun, Paramount wanted to reach the younger generation. However, Gen Z-ers were born decades after the original’s release and often had no connection to the franchise.
“For us, it was really a concerted effort to make sure that people who did not grow up with a movie to want to go see it. There’s considerable effort to go after that under-35 audience, and a lot of our tactics went that way,” Weinstock said.
For instance, a star-studded red carpet world premiere on an aircraft carrier livestreamed on 120 YouTube channels worldwide. Top digital creators, aka influencers, with a collective reach of 140 million walked the carpet, promoting the film to their legions of followers.
“We knew the movie was so strong that the word of mouth coming from that premiere would also be going a long way. So that was something that was three and a half weeks out of opening. We were basically telling the world, ‘Hey, we have the goods. And we want to tell everyone,'” Weinstock said.
Corden’s flight with Cruise, where the pair performed stunts in an aircraft piloted by the actor, also played into that word-of-mouth strategy.
“It was something that that filmmaker team and Tom [Cruise] came to us and said, ‘What do you think?’ And we’re like, ‘Oh my God. That’s crazy. Can we do it?’ And because [Cruise] has such a strong relationship with Corden, it was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,'” Weinstock added.
The stunt took weeks to put together.
“It does not happen quick,” Weinstock joked, noting Cruise had safety at the forefront of his mind and the company had to go through proper channels to get the stunt cleared.
Beyond the more than 25 million views the video received on YouTube, the sketch spread all over social media, becoming a key component in the campaign’s digital strategy. For instance, a Late Late Show clip of Cruise telling Corden he would “dump” him out of the plane if they lost an engine has racked up more than 12.5 million views on TikTok.
“TikTok really emerged in the last couple of years, obviously. So we created a ton of content, not just with creators, but our own team, a ton of digital marketing assets that we went strong on TikTok with. Thankfully, audiences connected with them,” Weinstock said.
Sticking the landing
In the end, the cross-platform marketing efforts paid off. Gen X and millennials predictably turned out in droves for the film, with the over-35 audience comprising 55% of its record-breaking Memorial Weekend opening ticket sales.
However, Gen Z showed up as well. At opening weekend, 20% of ticket buyers were 18-24.
“So much effort went in to broaden out the audience, and to see 20% in that narrow range of 18 to 24 year-olds, which is a tough audience. They’re not teenagers, the upper-end of teenagers. And they’re not 30-somethings or 40-somethings that might have more experience with the movie. So that was definitely the one stat that we were obviously most excited about. I think for us, it was just the breadth of the audience. We got everyone,” Weinstock said. “It’s hard to find audiences that we did not get to come, and not only opening weekend.”
The road here wasn’t easy. The premiere on the aircraft carrier obviously had to move several times to accommodate the new release dates for the film, and even coordinating with Cruise’s team for the AFC Championship game required marketing acrobatics to find availability, work around schedules and produce a piece in time for the game. Still, as Weinstock said, the movie truly did reach everyone.
The film is the first billion-dollar movie in Cruise’s 40-year career and one of Paramount Pictures’ highest-grossing films ever. It’s already passed The Avengers to become ninth on the all-time list for domestic gross, with Jurassic World’s and Titanic’s total domestic box office numbers well within sight. And there aren’t many signs of it slowing down, as the movie recently took in $16.4 million internationally during its ninth weekend.
“There’s just no gravity with this movie,” Weinstock said. “It just keeps flying high.”
