Tom Cruise is walking on sunshine and smiling at the bank after the incredible film year he had, this 2022. The actor earned a whopping $100 million salary for his movie Top Gun: Maverick, which received critical acclaim.
His business mind paid off when negotiating the terms of his contract for the Top Gun sequel. Cruise believed in the movie and tied his fate to it, thus raking in hundreds of millions when it succeeded at the box office.
Scroll down to see how he did it.
Cruise earned an upfront fee before receiving payment as an actor and a producer on Top Gun: Maverick. He also took a cut of the streaming revenue when the movie landed on home media.
Top Gun: Maverick grossed $1.488 billion, Cruise's highest career gross and the second movie to rake in over a billion dollars post-pandemic. The budget was $170 million, so it's phenomenal that Cruise raked in more than fifty percent of the budget.
Top Gun: Maverick crossed one billion dollars in less than a month and received high praise from critics. The movie earned 96 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator, 8.4/10 on IMDb, and 78 percent on Metacritic.
It's earned several award nominations, including Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture in 2023, a few Satellite Award categories, and Critics Choice Award. Cruise also received a Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival.
Top Gun: Maverick follows Tom Cruise's original character, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, still being rebellious as a Navy Test Pilot while he has to train a new set of Top Gun cadets. He gets a new mission that forces him to confront his past and face his fears while making the ultimate sacrifice.
There's one face from the first movie, Iceman (Val Kilmer), while new faces joined the group, including, Cyclone (Jon Hamm), Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), and a new love interest replacing Charlie (Kelly McGillis), Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly).
Cruise thanked the fans and the crew on Twitter when the movie reached the one billion dollar mark. He was right to do so because 16 percent of the viewers watched Top Gun: Maverick twice, and Four percent reportedly went at least four times to see the movie.
It's Paramount's highest-grossing movie of all time.
Critics suspect. Cruise would continue with this payment method and multiply his coffers with the upcoming Mission: Impossible movies.
