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Everyone’s favourite mushroom-powered plumber is making quite a splash on the big screens and his debut has been nothing but phenomenal. Seems like Chris Pratt’s voice is working its sweet magic after all!.
Illumination and Universal’s Nintendo video game adaptation, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, has demolished the box office and snagged the biggest opening weekend for an animated movie ever. The movie brought in a whopping USD$204.6 million (roughly AUD$305 million) in just the first five days of its release in the US and a total of USD$377 million globally (roughly AUD $564 million), topping the USD $358 million global opening for Disney’s Frozen II. These numbers come via the sales numbers as presented by media analytics company Comscore. But that’s not the only record the film has broken.
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The Nintendo film is now the biggest global opening of 2023, beating USD$225.3 million (roughly AUD$337 million) box office record previously held by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Per Comic Book, the film has even managed to dethrone 2016’s Warcraft movie, which grossed USD$210 million, as the biggest-ever worldwide opening video game film, while surpassing Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s three-day opening of USD$72.1 million in the US.
Adding another gem to its crown, the movie also bagged the biggest five-day launch in history after knocking off Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and is currently the best-ever opening for Illumination Entertainment. As per The Hollywood Reporter, Super Mario is set to be “the first all-audience blockbuster of 2023,” thanks to its friendly PG rating that’s attracting both families and general audiences. THR also notes that the film’s relatively shorter run time of just 92 minutes has also contributed to its success as it enables “theatres to pack in more screenings.”
Even though the reactions from critics about the film were mixed, a majority of viewers have praised the adventurous drama for its colourful animation and the vibrant world which do a great job of bringing all the characters to life. The movie’s performance on Rotten Tomatoes is quite contrasting. While it holds a modest Tomatometer rating of 57 per cent, the audience score is remarkably high at 96 per cent.
In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Brooklyn plumbers Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) find themselves in a magical new world “under threat from the powerful Bowser (Jack Black).” After somehow getting separated from each other, Mario “embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi.” With the Mario film now being a smash hit, we expect Nintendo to continue telling more interesting stories as well as introduce other prominent characters from the IP, which will help the company establish a blooming film franchise that might be just as successful as the games.
