‘Super Mario Bros.’ Had The Third-Biggest U.S. Premiere For An Animated Film

Topline

The Super Mario Bros. Movie—the film adaptation of the hugely popular Nintendo games—smashed box office records last weekend, and it’s already cementing itself among the top-performing animated movies of all time.

Anya Taylor-Joy attends Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” screening in Los Angeles on April … [+] 1. (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)

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Key Facts

The Super Mario Bros. Movie, produced by Universal Pictures, Illumination and Nintendo, brought in more than $140 million at the domestic box office between Friday and Sunday, following a Wednesday premiere.

A star-studded cast lends their voices to the franchise’s iconic characters, including Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Charlie Day as Luigi, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong and Keegan Michael-Key as Toad.

Though it fell behind the opening weekends of Disney films Incredibles 2 and The Lion King’s 2019 remake, The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s opening weekend outgrossed animated hits like the Shrek and Toy Story films.

Super Mario Bros. is the only film released after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic to rank among the top ten domestic animated film opening weekends.

Globally, The Super Mario Bros. Movie surpassed Frozen II as the largest opening weekend for an animated film, grossing $377 million.

Top 10 Domestic Animated Opening Weekends

The Lion King (2019): $191,770,759
Incredibles 2 (2018): $182,687,905
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023): $146,360,000
Finding Dory (2016): $135,060,273
Frozen II (2019): $130,263,358
Shrek the Third (2007): $121,629,270
Toy Story 4 (2019): $120,908,065
Minions (2015): $115,718,405
Toy Story 3 (2010): $110,307,189
Shrek 2 (2004): $108,037,878

News Peg

The Super Mario Bros. Movie debuted last week to huge financial success, despite mediocre reviews. The film has a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46% on Metacritic (though the audience scores for both are much higher: 96% and 87%, respectively). The film cost $100 million to produce.

Tangent

Super Mario Bros. has broken plenty of additional box office records, Variety reported. The movie had the biggest opening weekend of 2023 both domestically and globally, in both cases surpassing Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It broke the record for the biggest opening weekend for a video game adaptation domestically and globally, surpassing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) in the U.S. and Canada and Warcraft (2016) globally. It also marked the largest five-day domestic opening ever for a film, though this only considers films released on a Wednesday (the largest-ever weekend openings include Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home, which opened on Fridays), Variety reported.

Key Background

The Super Mario Bros. Movie attracted initial fan skepticism when the voice cast, which primarily consists of celebrity actors instead of professional voice actors, was announced in September 2021. Charles Martinet, who voices Mario in the video game series, had previously expressed interest in reprising his role for the film adaptation, though he was instead cast in a cameo role as Mario and Luigi’s father. Voice actress Tara Strong, known for voicing characters like Timmy Turner in The Fairly OddParents and Bubbles in The PowerPuff Girls, tweeted Martinet should have been offered the role shortly after a teaser trailer featuring Pratt’s voice debuted in October 2022. Strong also criticized Hollywood for undervaluing professional voice actors and instead casting celebrities as characters that voice actors originated. In March, Pratt said he understood the criticisms that the film was a “cash grab” because it features a cast of well-known celebrities instead of professional voice actors, but said “there were so many hearts and souls and minds dedicated to making sure that didn’t happen.”

‘Super Mario Bros.’ Had The Third-Biggest U.S. Premiere For An Animated Film—Here’s The Entire Top 10