The Super Mario Bros movie may not have scored well with the critics, but it has broken box office records in its opening weekend of release. The family movie has made two significant achievements – the biggest opening ever for a video game movie and the biggest opening ever for an animated movie.
The video game adaptation took $376.5million at the global box office in its first five days of release, beating Frozen II’s $358m record for the most successful global opening of all time for an animated movie. The kids movie also beat Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania as the biggest film opening of 2023 so far.
The Super Mario Bros Movie is also animation studio Illumination’s biggest opening ever, which is nothing to be sniffed at, given that they’re the studio behind the Despicable Me/Minions franchise, which has grossed $4.4 billion globally. Inevitably, there is already talk of a Super Mario Movie 2.
The Super Mario Bros movie has a ‘rotten’ score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but that obviously hasn’t deterred families on Easter or Spring breaks from flocking to the movie theatres. The controversial casting of Chris Pratt as the world’s favourite Italian has also done nothing to dampen the crowds of movie-goers.
The box office success of The Super Mario Bros Movie is a welcome one, as theatrical grosses are still not back to pre-pandemic levels. Let’s hope that this trend continues with the release of blockbusters such as Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and The Marvels. The much more adult-skewed John Wick 4 has also been a success story, and is currently the second highest grossing movie of the year – which is rare for an R-rated movie.
While we wait to see how those new movies fare, check out our guide to the best comedy movies.