UPDATE
As noted by Nintendo Everything, the opening for the movie in Japan was over $13 million, and it made an extra $3 million on Monday.
ORIGINAL STORY
It’s honestly a bit hilarious to see how far the Super Mario Bros Movie has come since it was first released over Easter Weekend in early April. Recall that the movie was moved up two days to help try and counter the holiday weekend, and the critic reviews of the film weren’t positive overall. However, that didn’t stop it from having the biggest global release for an animated film and racking up the dollars as it went along. In fact, it did something that few other movies can do, get people to come back and see it again over the course of weeks.
If you’ve paid attention to the box office results, you’ll know that the Super Mario Bros Movie has had rather small weekly drop-offs. This past weekend was no different, and it set a record for the biggest 4th-weekend opening for an animated film. But the real sticking point here is that, as predicted by many, the film has crossed a billion dollars at the global box office:
To say that’s a huge accomplishment is an understatement. First, only a handful of animated films have crossed that milestone, most of which are owned by Disney or Pixar. So for Illumination to do this, for the second time, and do it with a movie about Mario is incredible.
Second, this furthers the gap between it and all the other video game adaptation films. None of them had passed $500 million at the global box office, yet here is Mario’s first film doing double that, and it’s not even done with its theatrical run!
Plus, on the 28th, the film was finally released in Japan, and as such, it will help further push the film into record-breaking territory.
While it won’t become the biggest box office movie ever, it will be high in the top ten of all time, and that’s an accomplishment that no one likely saw coming.
So why did the movie do so well? First, you can’t deny the power of Mario, as he’s one of gaming’s greatest icons. Furthermore, this was a purely animated feature, which likely drew in many families with their kids to see what it was like.
As Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto has stated, the film’s success was surprising, but it’s also been reassured by him that there will be more movies from Nintendo’s library in the future. So who’s up next for their big-screen debut? Only time will tell.
