Yahoo News ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Smashes $500 Million at Domestic Box Office
Wahoo! “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” crossed $500 million at the domestic box office, becoming one of only 19 films to ever surpass that benchmark.
In its fifth weekend of release, the movie collected a huge $18.5 million from 3,909 North American theaters and landed in second place behind Disney’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($116 million).
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At this point, the animated video game adaptation — from Universal, Illumination and Nintendo — is the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America with $518 million and globally with $1.15 billion. It’s the first movie from Illumination, the company behind “Despicable Me” and “Sing,” to hit the $500 million mark at the domestic box office. Also this weekend, “Mario” surpassed “Toy Story 4” ($1.07 billion) to become the fifth-biggest animated movie of all time.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opened in theaters on April 5 and generated a towering $204 million in its first five days of release, notching the biggest opening weekend of the year and the second-biggest debut ever for an animated movie. Thanks to repeat business from family audiences, as well as brand recognition and nostalgia for the popular Nintendo game, “Mario” held the No. 1 spot for four consecutive weeks.
Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, the movie — featuring the voices of Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy and Jack Black — follows the Brooklyn-based plumbers known as Mario and Luigi, who are sucked into the mystical Mushroom Kingdom. Along with Princess Peach, they prepare to stop the mighty Bowser from total domination.
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