The Super Mario Bros. Movie is already a massive hit. The new animated movie from Nintendo and Universal’s Illumination debuted over the holiday long weekend and raked in $204 million at the domestic box office, with $146 million of that coming over the usual three-day weekend. Factoring in international box office, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has already earned over $377 million.
These impressive totals mean that The Super Mario Bros. Movie now has the second highest three-day weekend opening of any animated movie domestically, behind The Incredibles 2’s $182 million. Mario did even better internationally, becoming the biggest global animated movie opening, breaking the previous record of $358 million held by Frozen 2.
This also makes Mario the biggest release of 2023, besting Disney and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — a movie that seemed to be a bit of a disappointment for the superhero franchise juggernaut. Just to round out the record breaking, The Super Mario Bros. Movie also earned the top spot as the biggest opening for a video game movie ever, besting Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s $72 million.
While Illumination is no stranger to massive openings and box office success, having previously animated the Despicable Me and Minions movies, Mario was also the biggest opening the Universal-owned animation studio has ever earned as well.
Neither Illumination or Nintendo have offered official word about a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie just yet, but with such an impressive debut already, and a box office total that’s likely to climb in the next few weeks, it seems likely that a return to the Mushroom Kingdom could be on the horizon for moviegoers.