Tom Cruise and his new pro-America blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” are proving the opposite of the “get woke, go broke” mantra by smashing box office records.
Cruise’s anti-woke movie is humiliating tough guy John Cena and NBA star LeBron James as it brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in global ticket sales, despite being banned in China.
The Top Gun sequel has just become the highest-grossing film in the USA and is now closing in on $1 billion in total ticket sales.
Cruise and the movie’s other producers refused to cave to China and remove a reference to Taiwan.
The Chinese Communist Party threatened to ban the movie unless the Taiwan flag was removed from the famous jacket of Cruise’s character Maverick.
However, they refused to bow and kept the reference in, causing China to ban it.
Top Gun: Maverick features Tom Cruise’s character wearing a bomber jacket with the Taiwanese flag on the back. In Taiwan, audiences cheered upon seeing Taiwan’s flag appear on Cruise’s jacket and applauded several times throughout the film.https://t.co/CGTbNBV39E via @bpolitics
— Steve Matthews (@SteveMatthews12) May 31, 2022
James and the NBA, on the other hand, groveled to China, as did John Cena.
When he was promoting his movie F9, “tough guy” Cena posted an embarrassing video apology after he called Taiwan a country and angered the Communist regime.
These are F9’s box office numbers:
- DOMESTIC $173,005,945
- WORLDWIDE $726,229,501
- CHINA $216,935,282.
Meanwhile, the NBA lost hundred of millions even after caving to China, according to the New York Post:
The NBA lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue following a 2019 fallout with China, league Commissioner Adam Silver said this week.
The conflict arose when then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey expressed support for anti-government Hong Kong protestors.
Morey, now general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, tweeted in October 2019 an image reading, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”
He later deleted the tweet, but China still responded by pulling NBA games off CCTV for 18 months – a significant blow to the league’s decades-long partnership overseas.
China began airing games again in late March.
Tom Cruise’s hit sequel has $401.8 million in North American ticket sales and just passed “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($398 million) to become the #1 movie of the year.
The movie has taken in $362 million internationally (without the China market) to bring its global total to a staggering $783.8 million.
With ticket sales still doing brisk business, many now think the movie will cross $900 million and could get close to $1 billion in sales.
“The R.O.C. flag has always been suppressed by China all over the world,” Rex Hsu, a software engineer from Taoyuan, told NBC News.
“Of course, it is both surprising and a joy to see the R.O.C. flag in a Hollywood blockbuster.
“I sincerely hope the world can see more of the R.O.C. flag so that we are not isolated from this world.”
From Variety:
“Top Gun: Maverick” already stands as Cruise’s highest-grossing film in North America, but it’s close to becoming the actor’s biggest movie at the global box office.
“Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” which collected $791 million worldwide in 2018, currently stands as his highest-grossing blockbuster of all time.
Cruise’s other top-earning tentpoles include 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” ($695 million globally), 2015’s “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” ($683 million globally) and “War of the Worlds” ($603 million globally).
“Top Gun: Maverick” opened over Memorial Day weekend and set a holiday record, collecting $160.5 million in its first four days of release.
It was the first movie in Cruise’s 40-year career to surpass $100 million in a single weekend.
The movie also got an endorsement from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He said before he watched the new movie:
“Original Top Gun is a great movie. Just rewatched. Looking forward to seeing the sequel.”
He was asked later, “Sequel better or worse than og?”
Musk said: “Better.”
Better
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2022
