Tom Cruise's Salary for Top Gun: Maverick Will Probably Shock You
Considering that Top Gun: Maverick made 1.454 billion USD in the box office, that number is, indeed, unexpected to say the least.
Many people are eager to know how much big movie stars earn for their star roles. And if you are one of such people, aware of what they earn normally, Tom Cruise's salary for Top Gun: Maverick is likely to surprise you – merely $13 million while top actors like him commonly ask for about $20 million these days.
But don't worry for the state of Tom's bank account. He's probably worth more than $600 million, according to CelebrityNetWorth, and his earnings from Top Gun: Maverick contributed very significantly to that, because $13 million was just his base salary.
He's also reportedly getting 10-20% of the net grosses from the theatrical run, and as the movie has grossed over $1.485 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2022, Cruise is likely to earn well upwards of $100 million, perhaps even as much as $200 million, from his work on it!
That is going to be the actor's biggest paycheck, and his second biggest, for War of the Worlds (2005), also is said to involve him getting a percentage of the movie's profits – whole 20%, in exchange for not getting paid anything upfront. Such handsome profits are only matched by what Cruise earned from Mission Impossible movies, but those were in part due to him being a producer.
In fact, actors getting the best earnings of their lifetimes, whenever they bargain to get a box office percentage from movies, which end up massively successful, is not uncommon. Good acting earns good rewards! Tom Cruise additionally stands out by his ability to strike bargains according to which he gets box office percentages before the studio even breaks even (percentage-of-profits contracts usually apply only to actual profits, with the actor starting to earn anything on top of his salary only once the movie is in the black), and by his seemingly inexhaustible energy in promoting his movies.
No wonder that by now he's one of the richest actors in the world, leaving the humble days of his youth, when Cruise earned merely $2 million for the original Top Gun movie in 1986, far behind.