The Super Mario Bros. Movie's box office opening smashes all records

The Super Mario Bros. Movie has completely taken over the worldwide box office with its massive global opening. It may not have got the full approval of critics as it only scored a 56% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes. But clearly, fans of the Super Mario games showed up at the theaters to support the film.

As per Box Office Mojo, The Super Mario Bros. Movie opened with $146 million on its 3-day weekend domestically and stands at a domestic total of $204 million, counting the 5-day weekend. The rest, $172.8 million came from the international market, which brought the global opening total to $377.5 million.

---

The Super Mario Bros. Movie's box office records and comparisons

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Image via Illumination)

Nintendo fans have allowed the Mario movie to have the biggest worldwide opening for an animated film as it has beaten the previous best of Frozen 2’s $358 million global opening. It had the second biggest domestic opening for an animated movie, coming after Incredibles 2’s $182.6 million.

But it tops the domestic charts for all video game movies by making more than double the previous best opening of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($72 million). Needless to say, it is also Illumination’s biggest worldwide opening, enabling the animated studio to go past $5 billion at the international box office across 13 films, and $8.45 billion worldwide.

This massive global opening is also the fourth biggest for Universal, as it just falls behind The Fate and the Furious’ $543 million, Jurassic World’s $525 million, and Furious 7’s $398 million. As for 2023, it has become the biggest movie of the year so far, beating Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s domestic ($117.1 million) and global ($225 million) earnings.

Over the weekend of April 7-9, it took down all other movies currently running in theaters. John Wick: Chapter 4 dropped only by 48.5% from its previous weekend’s domestic draw as it made $14.6 million. Dungeons & Dragons dropped by 61% and fell to 3rd place after opening 1st last weekend. It made $14.5 million, and the ones following it are Air ($14.5 million) and Scream VI ($3.3 million).

---

Why The Super Mario Bros. Movie could make $1 billion

Illumination has had massive success with movies from The Despicable Me and Minions franchises. Both of those IPs managed to deliver billion dollar hits, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie might be in for a similar result.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Image via Illumination/Universal)

A lot will depend upon its second-weekend drop. Blockbusters have formed a pattern of enduring massive drops in their second weekends in the post-pandemic era, but if The Super Mario Bros. Movie manages to keep its domestic drop between 50-55%, it will manage to hold strong.

It could prove to have long legs, as the road to take over the box office for the entire month of April is totally clear. There’s practically no real competition as we’re only going to get Universal’s Renfield on April 14. So, the Mario movie could do great business until Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 releases on May 3.

If The Super Mario Bros. Movie ends up entering the Billion Dollar club, then it’ll become Chris Pratt’s 6th movie to do so after Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and the three Jurassic World movies. The success of Mario might also help Pratt’s next Guardians outing. Ultimately, however, everything depends on the second weekend’s performance.