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 streaming today 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 now available on Paramount+, just in time for Christmas. It will also have its world TV premiere on EPIX at 8 p.m. ET/PT, on cable and the EPIX 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. The film just wrapped up one final attack run when it was rereleased to theaters earlier this month. 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.
This story has been updated throughout.