Weekend Box Office Results: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Powers Up for Massive Opening

Weekend Box Office Results: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Powers Up for Massive Opening

Families waited for almost four months — 105 days, to be exact — after the opening of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish for the next big animated film to hit the marketplace. Apologies to The Amazing Maurice and anyone who took their kids to Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, but the drought was clearly felt, and it was amplified by anticipation. Much more than the live-action version of the video game that dubiously celebrates its 30th anniversary next month, kids wanted to see “SMB” this weekend, and those initials are being entered into box office high scores all...

Families waited for almost four months — 105 days, to be exact — after the opening of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish for the next big animated film to hit the marketplace. Apologies to The Amazing Maurice and anyone who took their kids to Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, but the drought was clearly felt, and it was amplified by anticipation. Much more than the live-action version of the video game that dubiously celebrates its 30th anniversary next month, kids wanted to see “SMB” this weekend, and those initials are being entered into box office high scores all over the place. King of the Crop: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Powers Up for Massive Opening $204.6 million. That is how much The Super Mario Bros. Movie has made since Wednesday. That is the fourth-highest five-day total since the pandemic, behind only Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It is the 17th best five-day start in box office history and the second best for an animated film behind only Incredibles 2, which had $233.3 million and the second best April start ever behind Avengers: Infinity War.
Just last summer, Universal and Illumination finally released Minions: The Rise of Gru after a two-year delay, and after 13 weeks in the top 10, it took another three before it could finally dethrone The Secret Life of Pets as the animation company’s top domestic grosser. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is going to achieve that in less than a month. It will also be the highest-grossing film of 2023 after just a week of release. (Photo by Universal Pictures)
There is something amusing in how Universal was the first studio to act in the wake of the pandemic by making Trolls World Tour available for home streaming — an act they were widely criticized for by theater owners, particularly AMC CEO Adam Aron, who went so far as to ban Universal films from his theaters. That did not last long, and Universal has been absolutely dominating the family theatrical market ever since. The Croods: A New Age managed to gross $58.5 million from Thanksgiving 2020 on through a pre-vaccine pandemic. Skip over Spirit Untamed to The Boss Baby 2, which grossed $57.3 million the following summer while also streaming day-and-date on Peacock. Then $162+ million for Sing 2 over Christmas 2021 and nearly $100 million for The Bad Guys in April 2022. The Rise of Gru would follow with $900+ million worldwide, and then nearly another half billion globally for Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, which spent 13 weeks in the top 10 in the U.S.
Now it is Super Mario Bros. turn, and it is already over $377 million worldwide. It took only four days for Universal’s latest release to domestically outgross both Disney’s Lightyear and Strange World combined. It took only five to outgross both their own Puss In Boots and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($190.8 million). The race for the top family film of the year may already be over. Looking forward, there is Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Elemental, and Wish, along with Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Paramount’s Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, Warner Bros.’ Wonka, and ultimately Universal’s Trolls Band Together and their Christmas Illumination collaboration, Migration. Maybe this similar drought will help boost sales for many of them, but none of them will likely be able to boast of holding the No. 1 spot at the box office for its first four weeks, which is entirely possible for SMB (unless it falls enough for Evil Dead Rise to overtake it in two weeks.) But expect it to hold in the top 10 at least until the weekend of June 9. In the meantime, it is only looking at two other films (Batman v Superman and the final Harry Potter) that grossed $180 million in their first five days and failed to gross over $400 million. Fresh Surprise: Air Sco...