With “Top Gun: Maverick,” Hollywood is turning to a 36-year-old franchise and a 59-year-old movie star for hope about its future. “Top Gun: Maverick” kicks off a summer of high-profile, big-budget releases that studio chiefs and theater owners hope finally gets moviegoing—and older moviegoers—back to prepandemic habits. Since Covid-19 decimated the theatrical moviegoing business and forced studios to focus on streaming efforts, executives privately questioned whether a zeitgeist-defining event such as “Top Gun: Maverick” was still possible if the big screen faded in importance.

“This is a superhero movie, but it’s a human-interest character drama and the superhero does not wear tights, does not wear a cape, does not have superpowers,” said

Chris Aronson,

Paramount’s head of domestic distribution.

The previous record holder for Memorial Day weekend was “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” which opened to $153 million in 2007.

“Top Gun: Maverick” was initially scheduled for release by Paramount Pictures in 2019, and was postponed several times throughout 2020 and 2021 as Covid-19 kept a majority of auditoriums closed. Along the way, the movie became an unofficial weather vane for the industry at large, film-industry executives said, as its shifting release date was seen as an indicator of how optimistic studios were about when theaters would reopen.

It premiered this weekend as skepticism mounts over the industry’s future in streaming. Investors knocked billions of dollars off

Netflix Inc.’s

NFLX 1.98%

valuation after the service said earlier this year that it had lost subscribers and was projected to lose more. Production budgets at Netflix and its competitors have come down in the months since, as the major studios brace for uncertainty and investor scrutiny.

Top Gun has had a winding road back to the theater. For years it was one of the few major franchises of the 1980s not to be revisited by studios leaning on brand awareness and nostalgia for hits. While Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones returned to the multiplex, the Top Gun franchise stayed idle despite the song “Take My Breath Away,” the catchphrase “the need for speed” and Mr. Cruise’s Ray-Bans etching themselves into the cultural firmament.

“Top Gun: Maverick,” co-financed by Skydance Media, stars Mr. Cruise as a veteran fighter pilot working with a group of younger recruits on a top-secret mission to destroy a uranium plant in an unidentified country. It has received rave reviews and a big marketing blitz from Paramount not seen in recent years.

In the years between its completion and release, Paramount, a division of

Paramount Global,

PARA 4.66%

sold other would-be theatrical releases, such as Chris Pratt’s “The Tomorrow War,” to streaming services rather than have them sit on the shelf during Covid-19’s spread.

“Top Gun: Maverick” was no such candidate, said Mr. Aronson, in part because the studio sensed it had a hit—and a powerful star who wanted to see his movie premiere on the big screen.

More than half of those moviegoers watching “Top Gun: Maverick” this weekend were over the age of 35, according to Paramount data, a more older-skewing audience than other 2022 hits—such as “The Batman”—have drawn in.

Until “Top Gun,” recent lucrative releases have relied on young men and teenage boys turning out. Older, more casual moviegoers have been the trickiest to lure back to cinemas, distribution executives say, raising fears that they had fallen out of the habit for good.

“We are pulling in demos that have heretofore not been going to the movies,” Mr. Aronson said.

Now the question becomes: Will they come back for more? The summer movie season is loaded up with make-or-break releases from the major studios that exhibitors are counting on for revenue, theater owners say.

“This is the beginning of a line of movies that are coming to our cinemas—finally,” said

Mooky Greidinger,

chief executive of

Cineworld,

which operates Regal Cinemas. On the calendar in the weeks ahead: “Jurassic World Dominion,” “Lightyear,” “Elvis,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Thor: Love and Thunder.”

Most critically for companies such as Cineworld, the releases are coming at a steady cadence, as opposed to the first half of the year, when big debuts were followed by weeks of empty auditoriums.

“We can finally say that the product is there,” Mr. Greidinger said.

Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com