Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise Got A Massive Payday for “Top Gun: Maverick”

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Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to 80s classic Top Gun, roared into theatres in 2022. Led by returning lead man Tom Cruise, the film sees Cruise’s hero from the original film training a new batch of fighter pilots. The film also starred Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, and Glen Powell among others.

The film was a smash hit, ending the year as the highest-grossing domestic film and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide. It also received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. It ended up taking home the award for Best Sound. However, its financial success may have been extra important as new reports emerge about how much Cruise earned for the film

Tom Cruise May Have Earned $200 Million For “Top Gun: Maverick”

As part of Deadline‘s recap of the most valuable films of 2022, the outlet analyzed their #2 pick, Top Gun: Maverick. The film made a profit of $391 million (net: $1.145 billion), balanced against a production cost of $753 million. Over a third of that production cost can be found in the actors’ pay. Deadline lists the “participation” cost at $280 million. While unsurprising given the names found in the cast, it’s just an insane amount to pay out. It is by far the highest cost of the film. In fact, it’s a full $100 million higher than the second highest cost, prints and ads.

Now just how much of that is Cruise’s payday? According to Deadline, “Cruise landed what sources call an old-fashioned movie star deal, one of the best in history. While some tell us it’s well north of $100M, others tell us it’s double that of his best payday on Mission: Impossible, which would get him to $200M.” If that high-end claim is true, that means that Cruise made almost as much money making the film as the film made in gross profit. Of course, a name like Tom Cruise doesn’t come cheap, but $100-200 million is an unbelievable amount of money. However, that is unconfirmed. If true, it would set a record for the highest payday of all time. But for now, that record is still held by Keanu Reeves. Reeves made $156 million he made across the second and third Matrix films.

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Lady Gaga Performs “Hold My Hand” At The Oscars

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Lady Gaga performed a stripped-down version of her song, “Hold My Hand”, at the Oscars. She also explained why the song is important to her. Lady Gaga was on stage the night of March 12, wearing just a black t-shirt and ripped jeans. She performed her song at LA’s Dolby Theater, for the 95th Academy Awards. This is after claiming she wouldn’t be there.

Before she started performing, she talked about the song and why it was important to her. She had spent years working on the song with her friend, BloodPop for Top Gun: Maverick. The song is about how we all need heroes, but we have to be our own heroes sometimes, according to her. “I wrote this song with my friend BloodPop for the film Top Gun: Maverick in my studio basement.” Lady Gaga explains, “It’s deeply personal for me and I think that we all need each other. We need a lot of love to walk through this life and we all need a hero sometimes. There’s heroes all around us in unassuming places, but you might find that you can be your own hero even if you feel broken inside.”

Lady Gaga’s “Hold my Hand”

Lady Gaga produced the song with BloodPop and Benjamin Rice. When she released the music video, it had scenes from both the 1986 original, Top Gun, as well as the 2022 sequel, Top Gun Maverick. There were also scenes of her playing the piano and singing on an airstrip mixed in.

Lady Gaga’s “Hold my Hand” was one of the songs that were nominated this year for Best Original Song. Its competition was Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,  Son Lux, Mitski, and David Byrne’s “This is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Sofia Carson’s “Applause”, as well as the winner, Rahul Sipligunj, Kaala Bhairava, and M.M. Keeravani’s “Naatu Naatu” from RRR. While she did not win the award, Lady Gaga gave a beautiful performance and gave a little more insight into the song and what it means to her. It is always interesting for a songwriter to talk about what they think the song they wrote is about.

Tom Cruise Jumps Out Of A Plane To Promote “Top Gun: Maverick”

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Tom Cruise has shared a video from the set of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning to promote Top Gun: Maverick. In the clip posted to Paramount Pictures’ YouTube page, he jumps out of a plane over South Africa.

“Hey everyone,” Cruise began. “Here we are over stunning South Africa, where we’re filming ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’ parts one and two. And I didn’t want the year to end without thanking you all for coming out to the theaters and thank you for supporting ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’”

LONDON, ENGLAND – JUNE 10: Tom Cruise attends the European premiere of “Rock Of Ages” at Odeon Leicester Square on June 10, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Stuart Wilson/Getty Images)

“Where was I?” he asked while free-falling. “Oh yeah. Thank you for supporting ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and thank you for allowing us to entertain you. It truly is the honor of a lifetime.”

“I’m running out of altitude, so I have to get back to work,” he said lastly. “We have to get this shot. You have a very safe and happy holiday, we’ll see you at the movies.”

Top Gun: Maverick will begin streaming on Paramount+ on Thursday, December 22. The film released in theaters back in May, over thirty years after the release of the original movie. It earned $1.488 billion worldwide at the box office, the most of Cruise’s entire career. In addition to Cruise, the movie stars Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, and Ed Harris.

As for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, the film is due to hit theaters on July 14, 2023. In a previously released promo for the film, Cruise also hung off of an airplane. That video was released back in September.

Check out Tom Cruise’s latest promo video below.

[Via]