The Super Mario Bros. Movie is breaking records faster than anyone can say “It’s a-me, Mario.” After grossing over $500 million so far globally, it has become the most financially successful video game adaptation ever.
As Variety reports, the animated blockbuster has raked in $260.3 million in the US and $248.4 million internationally, which takes its total global gross so far to $508.7 million. This means it's now the biggest grossing film of 2023, both in the US and globally, leaving Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the second-biggest grosser this year, trailing behind.
Taking the crown as the biggest video game adaption in history means it has overtaken Warcraft and PokemonPokemon: Detective Pikachu. Those movies garnered $439 million and $431 million at the global box office, respectively.
As Variety notes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie now ranks as the world’s second-biggest animated movie released since 2019. It would need to rake in more than the $942.5 million Minions: The Rise of Gru made to take the title of the biggest animated movie in the last four years.
To track as one of the biggest animated films of all time is a whole different ball game, though. The most successful animated movie is the 2019 remake of The Lion King, which pulled in $1.66 billion at the global box office. As Engadget notes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie doesn’t rank in the top 50 yet in that field.
It’s a surprise it even got made. After the critical and commercial flop of the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. movie (it made $38.9 million on a $42 million budget), Nintendo was hesitant to license its intellectual properties for further film adaptations.
After Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto met with the founder of the animation studio responsible for Despicable Me, a collaboration was quickly on the cards and this adaptation was announced in 2018. The $100 million budget movie was co-financed and distributed by Universal.