Super Mario Bros. Movie Proves Video Games’ Hollywood Clout

Domestically, the three-day opening of $143 million has topped post-shutdown films like “The Batman” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and is second only to “Incredibles 2” ($182 million in June 2018) on the all-time animation opening weekend list. It’s also the third-highest Easter weekend opening behind only “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” ($166 million in 2016) and “Furious 7” ($147 million in 2015).

As one might expect for an Illumination film, especially after the runaway success of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” last year, families turned out in droves this holiday weekend for the first animated movie to hit theaters since “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” back on Christmas week. Combining Illumination’s manic, gag-filled style with a Nintendo icon that millions of kids have played with on the Switch was a surefire formula to draw out parents and the under-12 crowd enjoying their Easter break.

But consider this early demographic data from Universal: only 38% of the film’s opening weekend audience were parents and kids, while 62% were general audience. By comparison, Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” last year had a split of 48% families and 52% general on opening weekend.

That’s not to say that “Super Mario Bros.” underperformed among families. With that $204 million extended opening, that 38% family share still equates to an immense turnout from that audience subset. What it does say is that “Super Mario Bros.” also sold a ridiculous number of tickets to everyone else.

That makes sense when you consider what “Super Mario Bros.” is. While critics were mixed on the film, saying in reviews that the film uses its world-class CGI animation to faithfully recreate dozens of elements from Mario’s nearly four decades worth of games but at the cost of a nearly nonexistent plot, nonstop devotion to references is exactly what Mario fans want from such a film.

Social media over the weekend gushed over every callback to Mario’s history, from a nod to the “Luigi’s Mansion” theme to Donkey Kong playing the bongos that sold like hotcakes when “Donkey Konga” was released on the GameCube in 2004. Kids could cheer for Mario wearing the yellow cat suit seen in more recent games, while Gen Xers could catch a glimpse of references to NES games like “Duck Hunt” and “Kid Icarus.”

And that excitement wasn’t confined to any age group or market. Insiders at Universal say that the studio’s internal data showed strong family and general audience turnout across the country. Even with very successful family films like “Minions 2,” the studio would usually see cities in the central and Midwestern U.S. overindex relative to the rest of the country, but data for “Mario” showed even turnout even as it earned the biggest opening in Illumination history.

With no four-quadrant titles coming out for the rest of April, the road is wide open for “Super Mario Bros.” to make a run for $1 billion worldwide, solidifying Nintendo as the newest, shiniest gem in Universal’s IP collection and potentially marking the start of a mutually fruitful relationship for both companies.

For Universal, Mario and his friends now have a cross-generational popularity that will bring with it billions in revenue, not just from theatrical but also from streaming, VOD, merchandise, and theme park visits to the new Super Nintendo World locations open in Osaka and Hollywood along with an upcoming Orlando location under construction.

Nintendo, meanwhile, could see the global cultural boost from having a hit “Mario” blockbuster spill over into new interest in their games. Activision VP Michael Lee noted that unlike Marvel and DC, where only a small slice of those who watch those superhero franchises in theaters also read current comic books, there are hundreds of millions if not billions of people who bought a ticket for “Super Mario Bros.” who are actively playing Nintendo games.

“If I’m a hardcore fan, I’m going into this weekend and wondering, ‘OK, what’s Nintendo and [Shigeru] Miyamoto-san up to? Are they going to make a new Mario game?” Lee said. “That new game is back to top of mind for those fans, and when a new Mario game does come out, they will be the first to pre-order.”

While there’s little hard data directly proving that a hit video game movie can lead to strong sales for the next game in that franchise, it’s worth noting that “Sonic the Hedgehog” saw great success on both fronts last year.

Seven months after Paramount released “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” to a $405 million global box office total, Sega released the video game “Sonic Frontiers,” selling over 26,000 copies in its first week of sales in Japan. By comparison, the 2017 game “Sonic Forces” sold approximately 10,600 copies in Japan in its first week. As of March 2023, “Sonic Frontiers” has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide in just four months.

As of now, Nintendo hasn’t announced any new “Mario” games for the Switch nor any new animated films with Illumination. But after this weekend, a sequel to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” will almost certainly be greenlit by Nintendo and Universal.

And it likely won’t stop there. In years past, Nintendo has explored other adaptations of its video game franchises such as a “Legend of Zelda” Netflix series that got shut down when its development was leaked to the public. But now that “Super Mario Bros.” has joined the likes of “Sonic,” “The Last of Us” and “Arcane: League of Legends” to make the jump from the video game world to Hollywood, and Sony is actively looking to turn its PlayStation franchises into box office riches, it’s up to Nintendo to decide how far it wants to go in Hollywood.

And if its decision leads to more projects with Universal and Illumination, this record-setting weekend may just be the first of many.

Scott Mendelson contributed to this report.