‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ breaks record-crushing ‘Minions’ as if it were a Goomba

The Super Mario Bros. Movie has broken yet another box office record, surpassing Minions to become the fourth highest-grossing animated film in history. According to Variety, the adaptation of the Nintendo video game is projecting a $13.3 million haul for its sixth weekend of release, showing a box office decrease of just 28 percent from its previous outing last week. 

The figures reveal that The Super Mario Bros. Movie has earned a total domestic gross of $536 million, while raking in a global total of $1.21 billion. That means the Nintendo plumber duo have dethroned fellow Illumination title Minions to become the fourth-highest grossing animation of all time, following behind Frozen II, Frozen, and Incredibles 2, respectively (per ComicBook.com). 

While Mario enjoys continued box office success in the weeks since its April release, the Nintendo adaptation’s top spot has been usurped by James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, after earning $118 million during its opening weekend. Per Variety, the third instalment of the space-bound Marvel entry will push beyond $200 million this weekend.

Mario’s ranking among the highest-grossing animations is somewhat a point of contention, given that Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King earned more than all of the current top four entries. This means that Mario places either in fourth or fifth spot, depending on your views around The Lion King as a live-action movie.

In any case, the high-ranking spot adds to an already mammoth string of records earned by Mario and his Goomba-bouncing pals. Since premiering, the film has surpassed the much-coveted $1 billion mark, become the biggest video game adaptation in history (ahead of Warcraft and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu), and the second highest-grossing animated film of ever domestically. 

So illustrious is the film’s success that it earned castmate Jack Black his debut appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, for his rendition of the soundtrack song Peaches as Bowser. The movie also led to Nintendo Japan’s official name-change for the character of Spike, and drew admiration from Disney CEO Bob Iger. “Allow me to digress for a moment to congratulate Universal for the tremendous success of Super Mario Brothers,” Iger said. 

“It certainly proves people love to be entertained in theatres around the world and it gives us reason to be optimistic about the movie business.”