Maverick’ Goes Back to Theaters Before Paramount+

Streamliner At your service. “Gonna take it riiiiiiiiiiiiiight into the …” funky post-theatrical release schedule. Photo: Paramount Pictures
Update, November 29: Before taking off into the wild streaming yonder, Top Gun: Maverick is doing one last bombing run in theaters. Your last shot to see it on the big screen in 2022 will be a theatrical rerelease scheduled for December 2–15. Alternately, you can wait a week to catch it on Paramount+, but just don’t whine that you missed your many opportunities to see Tom’s smushed-up fighter-pilot face blown up to Imax proportions.
Original November 22 story follows:
If you have not yet experienced the high-flying, record-missiling, massively maximalist action that is Top Gun: Maverick — or simply want to experience it again for the 17th time — you’re in luck: It’s finally hitting streaming in one month — after an initial release on digital and physical home video. At last, we can experience Maverick on a four-inch phone screen with painfully tinny earbuds we snagged for $3.69 at the corner store, rolling the dice on whether Paramount+ will crash or not — you know, exactly as Tom Cruise intended!
Kidding, of course. Who can know, really, what Tom Cruise intends? (Tom, if you’re reading this, please don’t push me out of a plane.) What we do know is Top Gun: Maverick is hitting Paramount+, scheduled to debut on the platform on December 22, just in time for Christmas. It will also have its world TV premiere on EPIX that same night at 8 p.m. ET/PT, on cable and the EPIX’s app. The streaming rollout of this movie was a pretty big deal in Hollywood for a couple years, thanks to the pandemic and Cruise’s well-documented insistence that it be released theatrically. Its box-office receipts vindicated Cruise’s argument: Top Gun: Maverick has made more than $1.45 billion globally since it came out in May. As a crossover hit, it’s not a bad holiday option for family movie night, either. Cruise’s aging fighter pilot, Maverick, battles old demons and military bureaucracy, Jon Hamm revives his “That’s what the money’s for!” energy as his cranky boss, Lady Gaga lends her pipes to the end credits, and — most importantly — stuff blows up. Miles Teller’s also in it? Does he blow up!? We won’t spoil it.