Mario number one!
In under a week, Universal and Illumination’s Nintendo video game adaptation The Super Mario Bros. Movie has already become the top-grossing 2023 release to date at the global box office with $508.7 million in worldwide ticket sales through Thursday.
It took only a matter of days for Super Mario to knock off Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the year’s previous best earner with $474.4 million in global movie ticket sales, including $212.2 million domestically.
Super Mario‘s domestic gross through Thursday stands at year $260.3 million, which is likewise the top showing of the year to date. Overseas, it has earned a stellar $248.4 million.
The list of records shattered by the movie since its launch over the long Easter holiday continues to grow, including now ranking as the top-grossing video game adaptation of all time after passing up Warcraft ($439.4 million) and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu ($449.8 million).
And it is the second-biggest animated film since 2019 behind fellow Illumination release Minions: The Rise of Gru, which earned $942.5 million during its run last year. (Super Mario bumps anime blockbuster Slayer: Mugen Train, which earned $494 million worldwide, to No. 3.)
Other notable stats as it heads into its second weekend: Super Mario is already Universal’s tenth-biggest animated film of all time at the global box office and is among only 13 Hollywood movies to have crossed $500 million worldwide since 2019. Of the 13, five belong to Universal, more than any other studio (the other four are Jurassic World: Dominion, Rise of Gru, F9: The Fast Saga and No Time to Die, which Universal handled overseas).
Elsewhere, a plethora of new movies hit North American cinemas this weekend in what marks one of the most varied and crowded lineups since the pandemic struck.
Universal’s modern-day Dracula vampire comedy Renfield and Screen Gem’s supernatural…
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