Steven Spielberg was right: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and Tom Cruise saved Hollywood

Steven Spielberg didn’t mince words when he caught up with Tom Cruise at this year’s Oscar nominees luncheon: “Top Gun: Maverick might have saved the entire theatrical industry,” the filmmaker was overheard telling his Minority Report and War of the Worlds star.

“You saved Hollywood’s ass and you might have saved theatrical distribution,” Spielberg said to Cruise in a video that went viral on social media last week. The exchange left the actor blushing.

Originally slated to hit theatres in the summer of 2020, Cruise and his filmmaking partners director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer held Maverick back from streaming so it could play exclusively in cinemas when the pandemic eased.

Exhibitors and critics got an early look at the film at CinemaCon in Las Vegas last April, and Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for data firm Comscore, says the feeling in the room was: “Holy s—! Tom Cruise just saved the movie industry.”

“Naysayers who predicted the demise of the movie theatre were silenced and moviegoers who hadn’t seen the inside of a multiplex in decades saw this as the film to ignite a spark to actually venture out to see a film on the big screen even when infinite options were available at home on the streaming services,” Dergarabedian tells Postmedia.