Box office: ‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ jumps past ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ — which record is next?
It was bound to happen that “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” a film that has exceeded any and all expectations since opening over Easter weekend, would reach $500 million before the release of Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.” Now, over the weekend, it has jumped past “Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker” on the all-time domestic list.
The “Star Wars” story was launched by George Lucas in 1977 with the original “Episode IV — A New Hope.” The ninth and (presumably) final chapter of the franchise opened before Christmas in 2019 with $177.4 million and eventually became the 17th highest-grossing movie in North America, making $515.2 million domestically. Some might think “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” may have been hurt by the COVID shutdown of movie theaters in the country, but by that point (March 2020), it was just pulling in money by dribs and drabs.
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Meanwhile, “Super Mario Bros.” hit $500 million faster than other movies that opened in the same general range ($146.4 million, not including Wednesday and Thursday). For instance, Disney’s live action remake of “Beauty and the Beast” (which “Mario” also has passed) opened with $174.8 million in March 2017, but it still took more than two months before it hit $500 million.
Same with Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” which opened with $158.4 million in July 2008, but it still needed a couple more weeks than “Super Mario Bros.” to hit $500 million. Of course, other films that opened with more than $200 million in December – “The Rise of Skywalker” opened below that mark – were able to get a bump from the boom normally seen by movie theaters in that week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
So far, Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” remains the fastest to make $514 million in just eight days – to be fair, it made most of that in its record-setting $357.1 million opening weekend. However, “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens” is still the highest-grossing movie domestically with a whopping $936.7 million.
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Regardless, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” shows no signs of stopping even as it drops to second place behind “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” this weekend.
After “The Rise of Skywalker,” the domestic totals for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” ($533.5 million) and “The Dark Knight” ($535 million) are the next domestic blockbusters for “Mario Bros.” to pass, followed by Jon Favreau‘s 2019 “The Lion King” remake ($543.6 million).
Coming up, there are no family-friendly PG movies until Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” over Memorial Day weekend, so we’ll have to see if “Mario” can get to $600 million domestic. Only 13 movies have ever achieved that benchmark, though 12 of them since 2009. “Super Mario Bros.” is already only Universal’s second movie to enter the top 20 (“Jurassic World” is the other), breaking up the dominance of Disney and its various subsidiaries, and joining “The Dark Knight” from Warner Bros.
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