Even as the reviews from critics are surprisingly harsh, it seems that the collaboration between Illumination, Universal, and Nintendo is heading towards that 1-Up Mushroom, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie is looking to make quite a big bang at the box office this weekend. Wednesday previews are already looking strong and are heading towards $26M sans Tuesday previews, which would potentially mean an $86.2M 3-day opening.
Luckily for it, this will be a 5-day opening and it’ll likely end up around $127.5M, which would put it on the path to becoming the biggest opening for a video game-based adaptation. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 opened to $26.3M but that was including Thursday previews. It held the 3-day record at $72.1M and while critics haven’t loved the Nintendo film, audiences seemingly do going by its Rotten Tomatoes.
Not just that, this film will also pull in the best 5-day debut for Illumination since Despicable Me 2‘s $143M back in 2013. With some strong legs, the film has a good chance of starting its own cinematic universe, as post-credit sequences have already been teased (Luigi’s Mansion, anyone?). The only question is if the legs will hold as family audiences haven’t really been reliable going by previous entries, but this film might be why they weren’t showing up; COVID has led to many saving up for the big releases.
Source: Deadline
