'Top Gun' sequel wins Labor Day, becomes No. 5 all time
MixMedia

In the weekend's battle of the box-office leftovers, Spidey had the early lead, but Tom Cruise turned on the afterburners.
Top Gun: Maverick (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA) - a 15-week-old film - returned to the leading spot at the box office in what was the weakest Labor Day weekend for film grosses in more than 20 years.

The high-flying Cruise film drew $6M over the three-day weekend, and $7.9M over the four-day holiday period. That was enough to surpass Bullet Train (NYSE:SONY), with $5.7M over the three days and $7.34M counting the holiday, and the 2022 re-release of last winter's Spider-Man: No Way Home (SONY), which pulled $5.4M and $6.55M respectively.
Saturday ranked as the year's best day for cinema attendance: It was marked by National Cinema Day, in which more than 3,000 theaters charged a heavily discounted $3 ticket price vs. a more typical $9 nationwide average. Those prices brought out an estimated 8.1M moviegoers for the single day.
But the discount didn't help total-weekend domestic industry revenues, which Box Office Mojo figured at $53M over the three days and $62.3M for the four-day weekend span. (By comparison, Labor Day weekend 2019 brought in $91.7M and $121M respectively; Labor Day has almost always been a weak cinema weekend.)
Top Gun: Maverick (PARA) (PARAA), though, used the occasion to officially surpass Black Panther and become the fifth-highest grossing domestic movie of all time, with $701.2M - a spot where it will likely come to rest, with Avatar at No. 4 with $760.5M.
And on that list, Avatar trails Spider-Man: No Way Home (SONY), which used its Labor Day re-release to add to the third-biggest ticket-sales pile of all time, now numbering $811.3M.
On a global-sales basis, Top Gun: Maverick has brought in $1.44B, while Spider-Man: No Way Home has pulled an impressive $1.91B.
Don't forget the other re-release of the weekend: Jaws (CMCSA) had the most impressive per-theater average, pulling in $3.32M across 1,246 theaters, good enough for the eighth-best film.
Still suffering through some painful weeks are the suffering film exhibitors: AMC Entertainment (AMC); Cineworld (OTCPK:CNNWF); Cinemark (CNK); (IMAX); Marcus (MCS); Reading International (RDI); Cineplex (CGX:CA); National CineMedia (NCMI).