Another weekend, another record broken by The Super Mario Bros. Movie. This time, it’s set a new domestic box office record in North America, surpassing the $500 million milestone.
According to The Hollywood Reporter (opens in new tab), that makes the hugely-successful animated movie only the fourth film to have crossed the “half-billion mark domestically in the pandemic era” – only The Avatar sequel, Top Gun sequel, and Spider-Man: No Way Home have surpassed it, earning $683.9 million, $718.7 million, and $814.1 million respectively.
It’s also now the first Illumination and Universal collaboration to exceed $500 million – albeit not adjusted for inflation – and is “the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time” and “third-biggest Universal release of all time” after E.T. and Jurassic World.
We already know that the Super Mario Bros. Movie (opens in new tab) is the biggest video game film of all time (opens in new tab) having crossed $1 billion internationally last weekend (opens in new tab), making it one of just 10 animated movies to have done so. Ever. That means Super Mario Bros. Movie joins a very select group of animated films that have broken the billion-dollar ceiling.
“Bringing the world’s most recognizable video-game characters back to the big screen is an intimidating task, especially when the failure of their last cine-venture still looms large,” we wrote in GamesRadar+’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie review (opens in new tab), for which we awarded the film three out of five stars.
“But Illumination and Nintendo’s big animated gamble The Super Mario Bros. Movie mostly sticks the landing. A fun, fast-paced take on the plumber siblings, it’s a far cry from 1993’s much-derided live-action Super Mario Bros.”
Here’s our roundup of all the upcoming video game movies (opens in new tab).
