Mario is about to become the first billion-dollar movie of 2023
This Sunday will see Nintendo's big animated swing pass the ever-coveted billion-dollar mark
Aux News Mario
A few weeks back, we wrote a piece on here noting that it seemed pretty likely—given the massive money-making trajectory of Nintendo, Illumination, and Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie—that the film would likely end up making a billion dollars at the global box office at some point. This Newswire was criticized, in some quarters—and rightly, we admit now! Rightly!—for being a tad alarmist, in so far as we suggested, at the time, that the peculiar chemical changes that happens in movie studio executive’s brain when they see 9 zeroes after a 1 in a movie’s overall earnings might lead to an oncoming glut of animated video game-based cinematic offerings that might be, you know, apocalyptically bad. We’d now like to formally apolo—
Wait, hold on a second, we’re just getting some breaking news…
Jesus Christ, it’s happening: The fucking thing is breaking a billion. Grab your kids and protect your dogs, because we are now only seconds away from someone greenlighting an animated feature centered on Zero The Kamikaze Squirrel. It’s already happening, probably. These bastards have probably got Plok and Bonk on speed-dial. Blinx The Time Sweeper might be going into pre-production as we speak!
Which is to say that Variety reports today that the Mario movie is now on-track to crest that billion-dollar mark this Sunday, becoming only the 52nd movie in cinematic history to do so, and the first of 2023. (That makes it only the fourth of the COVID-19 era, after Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way Of Water. First one not to be a sequel, too, albeit a “not a sequel” with massively famous IP powering it.) As ever, Mario is being propelled along by a blend of strong domestic showings ($458 million in the U.S. and Canada) and a powerful international response that’s seen it do big numbers in the U.K., Mexico, and Germany. It’s not clear how long the run can continue, though; the film is about to hit its first really serious blockbuster competition next week, when Marvel releases Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, which might very well bring its meteoric, Bubsy-encouraging rise to a close.
32 Comments
I for one welcome our 8-bit overlords.
Financially flush, culturally bankrupt.
The A.V. Club?
Culturally bankrupt, absolutely, but financially flush? Only if by that you mean “flushing their money down the toilet on reality show recaps that no one reads”.
If you said “The AV Club”, you are wrong; they were never financially flush.
I really doubt the AV Club is financially flush.
I think I’ll finally be able to sell my Lode Runner script! Wish me luck!
This could be the beginning of the Bungeling Cinematic Universe!
And then they can make a prequel and we’ll finally have a Bomberman movie. It’s all coming together!
Mario is entrenched into the hearts of children to grandparents of various diversities and cultures?
You might be missing that feature from your script.
I do wish you luck because if it hits big. My porn parody script Load Runner, will also sell
I have little interest in Mario but if this leads to a Metroid movie, I’m in.
The Mandalorian is basically just Metroid with a Star Wars skin.
Illumination cannot be stopped! God what a bleak future, the only rival to Disney now is a company that makes an endless supply of mediocre films that make billions. At least Dreamworks had ambition.
At least Dreamworks had ambition.The studio that largely made its name off of cribbing whatever ideas Disney was working on?
Shrek showed us that there are good ways to crib from Disney. Shark Tale showed us that there are very bad ways to crib from Disney.And Bee Movie showed us that if you’ve got Seinfeld money you can trick a major studio into making a movie about a bee fucking a human woman.
They weren’t tricked. They wanted it made as well. Hollywood is run by a secret cabal of Honey Humpers, as bee fetishists call themselves.
Shrek has never shown good anything.
Did it though. I recall thinking the first two Shrek movies were pretty good when I saw them but a recent rewatch with the kids changed my mind. They have not aged well at all. Disney gets a lot of crap, especially their early 2000s run, but I will say that recently I had a better time with Treasure Planet and Atlantis then I did with Shrek
It did a lot of that too especially early on with Antz. But stuff like Prince of Egypt or Road to El Dorado I would still call ambitious and at a point it was Disney ripping off Dreamworks with crap like Chicken Little. I just don’t see any creative spark at Illumination and they don’t need it judging by how well there movies make.
If it finally results in a Baseball Simulator 1.000 movie, it’ll all be worthwhile.
Or Mutant League Football. The script practically writes itself.
I see a lot of kids movies, because I have kids. Most of them are not good. The Super Mario Bros. movie was pretty good for a kids movie, and they included a bunch of Easter eggs for middle-aged nerds. It’s not surprising it made a billion dollars. It’s not an apocalypse.
I have no idea why anyone would hate on this movie.
It literally copied the game 1:1.
Now we’re supposed to hate video game movies that stick to the video game?
Well according to YouTube the movie is “infected with the woke mind virus” because the princess isn’t immediately captured and is shown to be competent.
Al Lowe is about to get a phone call from Hollywood.
Is Brazzers considered Hollywood?
Content is content, so who’s to say what isn’t Hollywood these days?
Are you guys going to be alright? You seemed pretty freaked out about the possibility.https://www.avclub.com/if-the-mario-movie-makes-a-billion-dollars-we-might-re-1850340730
Looks like William Hughes’ worst nightmare is about to come true: an era where Hollywood’s next big thing is video game movies that are actually accurate to the source material, rather than cookie-cutter superhero movies that increasingly scrape the bottom of the IP barrel! What if he ends up not getting an “El Muerto” movie starring Bad Bunny after all??
Yah yah, too bad this will encourage more shitty videogame adaptations like The Last of Us, Arcane and Cyberpunk Edgerunners
I still fail to see how this impacts my life