This past weekend, Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary” passed $300 million at the global box office, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2026 so far. But its reign atop that list will be short-lived thanks to the return of Mario, Luigi and the most famous franchise in video games.
Three years after “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” smashed the Easter weekend and video game adaptation box office records, Universal, Illumination and Nintendo are back with “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” a film that is expected to make the “Mario” series only the third in animation history to reach the $1 billion mark worldwide with both of its first two installments, joining Disney’s “Frozen” and “Zootopia.”
In 2023, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was expected to be a tentpole hit for Universal, but primarily driven by families like most Illumination films. Instead, it became a crossover hit, pulling in kids and families but also millennial and Gen X Nintendo fans, exploding to a five-day domestic opening of $204.6 million, the largest ever for an Easter weekend and the largest five-day North American opening for any animated film ever until “Moana 2” beat it with $225 million over 2024’s Thanksgiving weekend.
“Super Mario Bros.” went on to gross $1.36 billion worldwide, ranking sixth on the all-time animation box office charts and second among all non-Disney/Pixar films behind only Chengdu Coco Cartoon’s all-time animation record holder “Ne Zha 2” with $2.21 billion.
So how high will “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” fly when it opens on April 1?
As “Star Wars,” “Jurassic World” and “Avatar” have proven, the law of diminishing returns can take its toll on even the most seemingly unstoppable billion-dollar franchises. And over the last few weeks, it seemed that this might be the case again as theatrical insiders told TheWrap that presales for “Super Mario Galaxy” had been lagging behind the pace of its predecessor.
But those presales quickly picked up this past weekend and have now slightly exceeded the pace of “Super Mario Bros.” Perhaps the late charge comes from families who are just now getting their Easter weekend plans in order and know when they can go to the movies.
Or maybe it is from millennial and Gen X gamers who are more likely to get the metric ton of Nintendo references this film is set to throw at the audience in a nostalgia wave directed right at their generation.
Not only does the film take its name from an acclaimed 2007 Nintendo Wii game and include characters and items from throughout Mario’s 40-year history, but Universal injected one last surge of hype into the pre-release buildup by announcing that Glen Powell will play Fox McCloud, the protagonist of Nintendo’s “Star Fox” series. The Arwing pilot is lesser known in mainstream pop culture, but is instantly recognizable to the film’s core adult audience who have fond memories of playing the space rail shooter on games ranging from the Super Nintendo to the N64 and Gamecube.
With hype peaking at just the right time, projections for “Super Mario Galaxy” stand at a floor of $170 million over five days. But theatrical insiders and rival studios think there’s a strong chance that Wednesday and Thursday night walk-ups from adults and weekend matinee turnout from families will help it match the $204 million domestic launch of “Super Mario Bros.” with a global box office opening of at least $350 million.
Critics might be just as tepid on a second helping of Mario as they were the first time around. The review embargo for “Galaxy” has not dropped at the time of writing, but early social media impressions compare the film heavily to “Super Mario Bros.,” which got a 59% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Of course, the subsequent audience turnout for that film despite the middling reviews showed that Nintendo’s mascot is criticproof. This is a franchise whose popularity spans generations, and the dopamine rush of seeing characters and iconography that have sold billions of Nintendo consoles over the last four decades on a movie screen is the only selling point Illumination needs.
And while it remains to be seen whether “Super Mario Galaxy” has any moments or jokes that become instant meme fodder like “chicken jockey” from “A Minecraft Movie” or the “Peaches” song from “Super Mario Bros.,” recent history shows that anything that gets that sort of reaction will only further boost the chances of repeat viewings among younger moviegoers.
Universal and Illumination have also made a habit of churning out hits together — the “Despicable Me” franchise has grossed over $5.5 billion alone, with another new “Minions” movie due out this July. But the Nintendo partnership, forged in 2018, has proved fortuitous for all parties. Not only are the films, which Nintendo and Universal co-finance, hits, but they also fuel a synergistic relationship that promotes the wildly popular Super Nintendo World attractions at Universal’s Hollywood, Orlando and Japan theme parks.
A successful “Super Mario Galaxy” opening is also good news for theater owners.
For the 2026 domestic box office to fulfill more optimistic projections of a $10 billion year, theaters need more films that exceed $500 million in North America and $1 billion worldwide, especially outside the summer and holiday corridors.
Easter weekend has yielded box office successes like “Sinners” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” but “Super Mario Bros.” stands far and away as the biggest film ever to come out of this holiday period, making “Super Mario Galaxy” the title long pegged as the pre-summer megahit of 2026, building momentum into a summer launch period that will include Lionsgate/Universal’s “Michael” and Disney/20th Century’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
While even those films won’t be enough to get theaters back to pre-pandemic levels — the top-heavy marketplace lacks the depth of theatrical successes that were seen before 2020 — “Super Mario Galaxy” should provide enough momentum to keep theaters from waiting until the start of summer for a slump breaker, and that’s more than what they’ve gotten over the past several years.
