‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Crosses the $1 Billion Mark
The animated film “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” crossed the $1 billion box-office threshold on Sunday, making it the fifth movie to do so since the start of the pandemic and the surest sign yet that the theatrical movie business is on the rebound after a prolonged downturn.
Despite middling reviews, the Universal Pictures film, which features Chris Pratt as the voice of the beloved video game character Mario, has been in theaters for only 26 days and is now the seventh biggest film in Universal’s history, passing both “Jurassic World Dominion” and the animated “Despicable Me” in worldwide box office grosses.
Of the five films to cross the $1 billion mark since the pandemic began, “Super Mario” is the first animated one. Geared to families with young children — and fans of the uber-popular Nintendo video game — the movie provided a welcome reprieve to theater owners who had been concerned that the family film business was at risk of not returning to prepandemic levels. In fact, “Super Mario” helped push the April domestic box office up 11.5 percent compared with prepandemic levels, according to the box office analyst David A. Gross.
Mr. Gross called the stat “a breakthrough” since it marks the first month that has surpassed its prepandemic average. The 2023 year-to-date box office deficit is now down 21.8 percent compared with that average.
Source: The New York Times
