The Super Mario Bros. Movie scored the biggest opening weekend for a film this year and set records for an animated film in its global debut.
(Bloomberg) — The Super Mario Bros. Movie scored the biggest opening weekend for a film this year and set records for an animated film in its global debut.
Worldwide, the picture opened to sales of $376 million, Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures said Monday. In the US and Canada, Super Mario Bros. brought in $205 million, smashing forecasts.
The film from Universal and the Illumination animation studio was released on April 5 to take advantage of spring break and the long Easter weekend. The film marked the biggest debut for an animated picture, Universal said, and also topped the $225 million best-of-2023 opening set by Walt Disney Co.’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Theater stocks rose on the results. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. was up 6.9% to $5.24 at the close in New York. Cinemark Holdings Inc. gained 6.6% to $16.21 and Imax Corp. added 5.3% to $20.85.
Read more: Movie-Theater Stocks Soar After ‘Super Mario’ Debut Draws Crowds
It’s also a victory for Nintendo Co., the Japanese entertainment giant that created the Mario video-game franchise.
A previous Hollywood effort, the live-action Super Mario Bros. in 1993, was panned by critics and has frequently appeared on lists of the worst films ever made. Nintendo’s efforts to expand the brand include a Super Nintendo World that opened in February at Universal’s theme park in Los Angeles.
Illumination, a Santa Monica, California-based studio founded by producer Chris Meledandri in 2007, has been the force behind a number of Universal’s animated hits, including Despicable Me and Minions.
“My mind is a little bit blown,” Meledandri said in an interview about the box-office numbers. “I’m extremely conservative by nature, but they are beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.”
Read more: Super Mario Bros. Producer on the Biggest Movie of 2023
Super Mario divided critics, with just 56% of reviewers recommending the film, according to RottenTomatoes.com. It did better with regular filmgoers, where it scored 96% overall. The cast includes Chris Pratt as the voice of Mario and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach.
The film opened alongside Air, an Amazon Studios picture about Nike Inc.’s courtship of basketball great Michael Jordan. That movie, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, generated $20 million in domestic ticket sales to finish in fourth place, according to preliminary estimates.
The film was produced with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, which co-financed the recent Top Gun and Mission: Impossible films, and Artists Equity, a company formed last year by Affleck, Damon, and former Goldman Sachs banker Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital.
(Updates sales in the second paragraph, adds theater stocks in fourth paragraph.)
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