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1 year ago
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The Super Mario Bros Movie is now expected to comfortably surpass the $1 billion global box office milestone, as it continues to surpass expectations.
Deadline reports that the film is currently sitting at a total worldwide gross of $678 million, of which $330 million comes from markets outside of North America.
This surpasses Saturday estimates for the weekend, which predicted the film would hit a worldwide gross of $659 million with $318 million overseas.
Deadline also points out that overseas box office has dropped just 28% from the first weekend to the second, which it describes as “amazing”.
The seemingly slow drop-off rate leads Deadline to conclude that The Super Mario Bros Movie “is expected to get to the coveted $1 billion mark”.
This was backed by Variety, which says the film “is primed to be the first movie of 2023 to cross $1 billion globally”, and The Hollywood Reporter, which says it “will soon cross the $1 billion mark”.
What remaains to be seen is just how far beyond $1 billion the movie will go, particularly because it has still to be released in Nintendo‘s native Japan, which doesn’t get the film until April 28.
Seven of Japan’s top 10 highest-grossing films of all time are animated, with the likes of Frozen bringing in a gross revenue of $190 million in Japan alone.
As such, if the film is as well-received in Japan as it has been in the Americas and Europe, given the country’s love for animated movies it could make a significant contribution to pushing the movie way beyond the $1 billion mark.
What remains to be seen, however, is how receptive the country will be to a Hollywood-created take on one of its homegrown IPs.
The Super Mario Bros Movie is already comfortably the highest grossing video game movie ever, with its global box office now far surpassing those of Pokémon: Detective Pikachu ($449 million worldwide) and Warcraft ($439 million worldwide).
Among professional critics, it currently has a 58% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It appears to be doing notably better with movie-goers, however, with over 10,000 verified reviews on the site delivering a current average score of 96%.
VGC’s own Super Mario Bros Movie review called it the best video game film yet.
“The Super Mario Bros Movie may not take any major risks, but it’s a faithful adaptation of the games and will appeal to children and fans of the series alike,” our critic wrote.
