Universal’s THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE raced to a spectacular $146.4M in the three days over Easter weekend. After adding in the $58.2M the film earned on Wednesday and Thursday, the total gross for five days stands at $204.6M. This far exceeds the consensus pre-release projections of $120M for five days. The worldwide total has reached $377M, establishing SUPER MARIO as the biggest worldwide opening of all time for an animated picture and setting the table for sequels to come.
This film settles the debate once and for all on whether families with small children are ready to return to theatres en masse for G- and PG-rated family films. Universal released SUPER MARIO with the full cooperation of Nintendo, the rights-holder for the video game and all its derivatives. The animators at Illumination have had a highly successful run of features including the DESPICABLE ME/MINIONS series, SING and SING 2, THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 1 & 2, and DR. SEUSS’ THE LORAX and DR. SEUSS’ THE GRINCH. Since 2010, Illumination’s movies have grossed $3.2B domestically, making it one of the leading animation studios in Hollywood. SUPER MARIO’s cast is led by Chris Pratt in the title role with Jack Black as Bowser and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong.
The current movie has no connection to the 1993 live-action SUPER MARIO BROS starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi. That film bombed with a Domestic box office of only $48M on a budget of $45M. The 1993 feature was released by Warner Bros. without any support from Nintendo and wound up making a number of “Worst Movies of All Time” lists. Its sour reception had a chilling effect for 30 years on any other studio attempting to bring back Mario to the big screen.
Lately, critics have been down on movies based on video games and comic book characters. They panned SUPER MARIO with a 54% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is scarcely better than the 50% given to SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS and 47% for ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Nonetheless, critics don’t buy movie tickets and droves of paying customers have shown up for SUPER MARIO and given a glowing Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 96%. With a production cost of only $125M and the box office for its first five days already reaching $204.6M, this video game is in bonus territory for Universal and Illumination.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 finished in a surprising second place this weekend, with an additional $14.6M after a decline of only 49% from last week. Plans are already afoot to create the next movie in the series, a spin-off starring Ana de Armas as a ballerina assassin.
Last weekend’s champ DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES took third place with $14.5M, a drop of 61%. Last week we pointed out that this picture needed to maintain at least 50% of its prior week’s results in order to have any shot at profitability. Alas, the verdict is now in and this may wind up being the final quest for the D&D characters.
Fourth place was taken by Amazon/MGM’s AIR, the second wide release to open this week. The Ben Affleck-directed film grossed $14.4M from Friday to Sunday and $20.2M after adding in results from Wednesday and Thursday. This was largely in line with pre-release expectations from box office experts. AIR tells the story of the game-changing partnership between rookie NBA star Michael Jordan and Nike in the early days of its basketball division.
While the “Air Jordan” partnership is now taken for granted, the film shows how Nike placed a high-stakes bet on Jordan, after incredible negotiations by Jordan’s mother who was uncompromising in her confidence that her son would become an NBA great and valuable asset for the shoe company. Affleck also stars in the movie, together with his Boston buddy Matt Damon and Viola Davis, whom Jordan hand-picked to play his mother in the film. Both critics and audiences have fallen hard for the movie, giving 93% and 98% scores respectively on Rotten Tomatoes.
The bar is high for this picture since it is a tall order to go past the $90M spent on the movie’s production. After five days, it has only managed $20M, and therefore sales will have to stay strong for several weeks ahead. Unfortunately, rough language earned AIR an R-Rating which will keep it from reaching the widest possible audience. It also went head-to-head against THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE, which resulted in some moviegoers choosing their favorite 80’s video game over rival sports and apparel icons.
Because no other movies opening in April offer similar competition, MGM might have been better served to push back AIR’s opening by a week or two. The NBA playoffs begin next week and will continue over the next two months, which should keep AIR’s basketball story relevant. Based on high Rotten Tomatoes scores, we expect AIR’s week two drop to come in at only 30% – 40%, making for a successful run over the weeks ahead.
SCREAM VI rounded out this weekend’s top five with an additional $3.3M, a decline of 38% from last week. SCREAM VI has become the top-grossing horror movie this year, with a take of $103.8M in the U.S. and Canada.
All movies this weekend grossed $205.1M, which is the best weekend since November 11-13, 2022 when BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER opened with $181M and all titles together grossed $209M. The same weekend last year (which was not the Easter holiday) saw a $71M opening for SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2 and a total box office of $119M for all titles.
WHERE ARE WE AS OF 4/6
After thirteen weeks, the 2023 box office stands at 137% compared with the same weeks in 2022 and 77% compared to 2019.
