Illumination’s Super Mario Bros. Movie has been out for three weeks, and has crossed hit the $1 billion milestone.
Chris Pratt’s Mario Voice | New York Comic Con 2022
Per Variety, the animated Chris Pratt vehicle is at $1.02 billion at time of writing, making it the first 2023 film to do so. Since its mid-week release on April 5, the movie hasn’t really had much of a box office slump, and has been a consistent earner on even a daily basis. As such, it’s both the highest-grossing video game movie ever and currently the highest-grossing movie for the year. Most of that is thanks to the film’s international audience, where it’s earned $532 million. It’s also the fifth movie of the pandemic era to hit the billion dollar mark, joining the likes of Spider-Man: No Way Home from 2021 and last year’s Avatar: The Way of Water.
According to exit polls from earlier in the month, the Mario movie has brought in plenty of demographics, from the 18-34 range to kids and older adults. With how big the larger brand is, and how hard Illumiation has been pushing the movie in recent weeks, the movie’s really blown up and likely done better than most folks would’ve expected. And again, it’s worth noting that the movie doesn’t really have any theatrical competition until Disney’s Little Mermaid remake in late May and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse pops up in June.
We’ll update this post with official box office numbers tomorrow, but the writing on the mushroom is pretty clear. Nintendo and Illumination haven’t officially divulged sequel plans yet, at least at time of writing. But given how well the film’s done in such a short amount of time, it stands to reason that we’ll be getting more Mario movies—and maybe even more Nintendo movies in general—for years to come.
Update, 4/30/2023 @ 12:50 ET: This post has been updated with specific box office numbers for the Super Mario Bros. Movie.
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