The Super Mario Bros. Movie made $37 million more than Disney's best animated film in one week
The Super Mario Bros. Movie made $37 million more than Disney's best animated film in one week
The Mario movie made four times its budget in just one week
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Mario’s 7-day total
💰 $427m in first 7 days: how much The Super Mario Bros. Movie globally
🥶 $240m: its 7-day North American total vs $202m for Frozen 2
🌎 $100m: the budget for this Universal Pictures and Illumination flick
🍄 Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 hinted at by the cast and credits scene
The Super Mario Bros. Movie has officially been out for one week, and the box office receipts show that it made four times as much as its entire production budget.
The Mario movie grossed $427,851,677 in its first seven days in theaters, according to Box Office Mojo, yet it cost Nintendo and Universal Pictures just $100 million to make. Theater revenue for the movie in the US and Canada is $240 million, while overseas cinemas brought in $187.6 million – and keep in mind that the film doesn’t release in Japan, Nintendo’s home country, until April 28.
Nintendo tops Disney by $37 million
For comparison, previous animated record holder Frozen 2 hauled in $202 million in the US and Canada during its first seven days in 2019, so The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now trending ahead of Disney’s best in North America by more than $37 million (again, this is the fairest direct comparison of domestic box office numbers for the first seven days). My $150 spent seeing the movie five times for our Super Mario Bros Movie review in 3D vs 4DX vs IMAX vs Dolby vs 2D – basically all formats – played a small part in that total box office figure.
Of the $427 million total, the Mario movie made $377 million worldwide during its first weekend in theaters, surpassing Frozen 2’s $350 million globally – although to be fair, Disney’s movie released on a Friday, whereas Mario had a Wednesday start date. That two-day headstart is akin to getting a boost at the beginning of a Mario Kart race. So today’s seven-day total is a little fairer and, still, the Nintendo movie is well ahead of Disney’s biggest opener.
This is on top of all of the money that Nintendo and Universal Studios are making from the launch of their theme park expansion in Hollywood – see my Super Nintendo World review before you go in person – and Super Mario Bros. Movie toys tied to the film. And Nintendo alone is selling the best Mario games for Switch at a record pace in April 2023, according to The Shortcut’s retail data.
Super Mario Bros. Movie 2: here we go
You can just hear Toad screaming the iconic “Here we go” catchphrase when it comes to the idea of a Mario movie sequel. Or maybe that’s Universal executives. Either way, Mario is minting gold coins right now and it’s a certainty that a sequel will happen.
Just don’t expect a Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 release date before 2026 – the fastest that Illumination, the Universal Pictures-owned studio behind this computer-animated movie, has ever made a sequel is three years. This comes from looking at the history of the studio’s Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets franchises.
But the hype for a sequel is real – even the cast of the Super Mario movie can’t help but speculate on where the Mario Bros. Movie 2 storyline could go. The most obvious new character to star in the next movie is Mario’s dinosaur pal Yoshi. But an interview with Jack Black, who voices Bowser and sings the hit song Peaches, vouches for fellow actor Pedro Pascal to voice Wario, Mario’s other archnemesis.
It feels as if Nintendo has the same momentum that Marvel had in the early 2000s when it first saw success in films. Nintendo has a fresh stable of iconic characters to put on the big screen and plenty of geeky throwbacks to take advantage of. Today’s $427m box office number for its first seven days in theaters is only the start.