When it comes to movies, there are two main ways it can earn money. The first is through the box office, where many consider it a failure or success based on what it does or doesn’t do. The second way to make money is through the home releases like DVDs, Blu-ray, digital purchases, etc. While not as hyped as the box office revenues, many movie studios see where the “retention rates” are for those movies as they can serve as a “second wind” for monetary gain. That brings us to the Super Mario Bros Movie, which is rumored to have some physical release issues.
While not confirmed or verified, the film was slated to arrive on June 6th this year, with a streaming release date to follow. But according to a potential source on Twitter, they’ve seen that the movie has been moved back to July 1st, and no streaming service date in sight:
While the tweet above says this news comes “via Amazon,” there hasn’t been confirmation of this, so take it with a grain of salt for now. But that does raise the question of why the movie would delay its home release by a month.
The answer might be simpler than you think. Simply put, the Super Mario Bros Movie is crushing it in theaters. It’s already over $900 million at the last confirmed tally, and it’s expected to make it to a billion by this weekend thanks to it now being out in Japan. So Nintendo and Illumination may be going to keep the film going in theaters for some extra weeks so that they can milk the market and get all the money they can out of the box office.
After all, releasing the home video and streaming service versions “too soon” could take people out of theaters and keep them at home.
Again, this is all speculation, but it would make sense because no one expected the film to do this good. Nintendo likely sent out the original home release date early because they wanted people to know when it would be available for them amid thoughts of their movie doing mildly well at the box office.
Even Shigeru Miyamoto was floored by how well the movie did, and he’s already promised that more Nintendo movies are coming. Whether they will do as well as this movie with Mario remains to be seen, as the bar has been set pretty high.
