Family-Friendly THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE Breaks Box Office Records
By Movieguide® Staff
Illumination’s THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE (2023) led the Easter weekend box office, grossing $146 million in the U.S. alone.
The movie adaptation of the popular Nintendo video game earned $173 million internationally, earning an astonishing $377 million in total and becoming the most successful video-game movie of all time.
The movie also set records for animated movies, surpassing Disney’s FROZEN 2 ($358M) and becoming the second-biggest three-day domestic animated opening behind FINDING DORY.
A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:
THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE (2023) is a new movie based on the iconic Nintendo video game about brothers Mario and Luigi, two plumbers from Brooklyn, New York. After Mario and Luigi find a green pipe in the sewers, they are transported into a different universe. The brothers end up getting separated, but both find themselves wrapped up in an evil plot by King Bowser. Bowser has seized a Super Star, which he plans to use to kidnap and marry Princess Peach, take over Mushroom Kingdom, and rule the world. Can Mario reunite with his brother Luigi and stop Bowser’s evil plot?
THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE (2023) has a strong moral message about brotherhood, sacrifice, and working together to overcome evil. The movie has breathtaking animation that honors its iconic source material while breathing new life into the large cast of characters from both Mario video games and other Nintendo games of the same universe. For Mario and Luigi, love for one another helps them overcome their deepest fears and stand up against Bowser and his army of Koopas, Goombas, and Piranha Plants. Due to some intense animated action/violence, Movieguide® advises caution for younger children.
Despite initial backlash at Chris Pratt voicing Mario, the family-friendly adventure proved once again that moral, uplifting movies perform best at the box office.
THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE came in ahead of the ultra-violent JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 ($269M) and the R-Rated AIR ($20M).
“This partnership between Nintendo and Illumination is just incredible and led to this extraordinary performance,” Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution, said.
“$377 million worldwide is just astounding and a testament to how important outside of the home activities are for families,” Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore, said. “Kids and their parents collectively were able to go out, have an outside the home event for the whole family at a relatively bargain price compared to a trip or a sporting event.”
After Disney’s 2022 box office failure’s STRANGE WORLD and LIGHTYEAR, some analysts considered if the animation genre was dead.
However, it appears that studios that stick to moral, family-friendly and uplifting content in their animated movies not only perform well at the box office, but dominate.
Movieguide® previously reported:
After one month in theaters, the Movieguide® Award-nominated adventure PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH clawed its way to the No. 2 spot at the box office, earning $11.5M over the Jan. 20 weekend.
The Dreamworks sequel to 2011’s PUSS IN BOOTS continues to outperform recent adult releases like MISSING (released Jan. 20, 2023) and M3GAN (released Jan. 6, 2023).
Although analysts of the 2022 box office assumed that family-friendly movies no longer attract large audiences, PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH proves, once again, that content matters to families.
Read More: How Studios Failed Family Audiences in 2022
In 2022, Disney released movies like LIGHTYEAR and STRANG WORLD, which many expected would become tentpoles in animation for 2022.
However, audiences’ wallets told a different story.
