People weren’t initially all that keen about The Super Mario Bros. Movie. When it was announced the Minnesota-born Chris Pratt would be playing one of the Italian leads, many balked. There wasn’t much enthusiasm for his voice when they first heard it either. But online furor didn’t damage its box office. Quite the opposite.
As per Deadline, the second attempt to turn Nintendo’s biggest cash cow into a big screen motion picture worked, and how. It opened on Wednesday and it’s on track for a stunning $195.3 million domestic 5-day weekend. That’s a bit less than the five-day record-holder, namely Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which hauled in $200 million over the same stretch.
The record it did break is the one for the biggest opening for an animated film, at least globally. Mario is predicted to gross $368 million worldwide, which is more than even the five-day gross for Frozen 2, which Hoovered up $358 million back in 2019.
Deadline rounds up some more records Mario broke:
–Biggest global opening and 3-day domestic to date for 2023 outstripping Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($225.3M, $106.1M).
–Biggest opening ever for Illumination, besting Minions‘ 3-day of $115.7M and Despicable Me 2‘s 5-day of $143M.
–Second biggest opening ever for an animated film after Incredibles 2 ($182.6M)
So congrats to the Mario Bros. team, which managed to pull off a Mulligan, atoning for the disastrous first attempt back in 1993.
(Via Deadline)