Nothing is stopping the Italian plumber from dominating the box office until Chris Pratt’s next film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, hits theaters next week. Still, it was ample time for the Super Mario Bros. Movie to pass the always coveted one billion milestones at the worldwide box office. It took the film 26 days in total to pass that mark and now stands at $490M in the US with an additional $532M internationally. That makes it the fifth film to accomplish this during the pandemic since Spider-Man: No Way Home gave theater owners hope for the future.
The film opened to a powerful $204M across five days and marks the second-highest debut for an animated film and the biggest opening weekend of the year following Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s still impressive opening in February. For now, the Nintendo film is the biggest earner of the year with quite a bit of competition on the horizon ready to take its mantle. The film has the advantage of being one of the biggest brands in the world and has a heavy nostalgia element tied to the project, which helps boost the otherwise dead family market we saw earlier in the year.
The question remains what this might mean for the future of video game adaptations? We’ll very likely see a boom as it is the next “superhero genre” trend in the market even as that genre of filmmaking still remains surprisingly strong even with a much softer development earlier this year. Ant-Man 3 opened strongly but fizzled out due to Disney’s streaming strategy in the past but it’s not a clear sign of a true “fatigue” as some have been maliciously waiting for.
The biggest takeaway from those that hit a billion is the nostalgia of it all. No Way Home re-introduced the world to some major characters from their childhood with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield returning in their respective roles. Top Gun Maverick hit a chord with older audiences due to its callbacks to an old era of star-first productions, which oddly many want back even with its strong restrictions of actors in samey roles and the industry depending even more on individual stars rather than giving smaller ones a chance.
Source: Variety
