LOS ANGELES — “Top Gun: Maverick” finds Tom Cruise called back into service by a rattled Navy. A new threat has emerged, one that a younger generation of pilots can’t crack on its own.

This job requires a battle-tested veteran.

It was a similar scenario in real life over the weekend, as Hollywood — still struggling to jolt moviegoing out of its pandemic slumber — looked to “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to a 36-year-old film, and Cruise, perhaps the last old-fashioned movie star, for a solution. The result was a defining moment for the film industry’s box office recovery, analysts said, with estimated ticket sales of $151 million in North America from Thursday night through Monday. That means more than 11 million people will have pried themselves away from in-home streaming services, according to EntTelligence, a research firm.

Add in overseas ticket sales, and the global opening total for “Top Gun: Maverick” over that period will approach $300 million.

“People are ecstatic,” said John Fithian, CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “We’ve spent two years answering God-awful existential questions about the future of moviegoing.” Fithian noted that older audiences, largely absent from theaters over the past two years because of coronavirus concerns, returned en masse over the weekend, “ending the debate about a full recovery.”

About 55% of ticket buyers were over the age of 35, according to Paramount Pictures, which released “Top Gun: Maverick.” Paramount and Skydance Media produced and financed the movie, which cost roughly $170 million to make. A megawatt global marketing campaign cost another $125 million or more.

Turnout for “Top Gun: Maverick” was unusually strong in some areas of the United States that tend to be overlooked by Hollywood, including Tennessee, Oklahoma, Utah, Oregon and northern Florida.

Adjusting for inflation, the original “Top Gun” cost about $40 million to make and collected $942 million at the global box office in summer 1986, according to the IMDb Pro database. “Top Gun” was released on 1,028 screens in the United States and Canada, which, at the time, amounted to an ultrawide rollout. To compare, “Top Gun: Maverick,” directed by Joseph Kosinski, arrived on 4,735 screens in North America, setting a theatrical booking record, according to Comscore.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.