Super Mario Bros. Movie just can’t stop stomping the box office competition
Evil Dead Rise stood no chance against Super Mario and Peach
Aux News Mario
Hail to the king, baby! The Evil Dead franchise is back in theaters with Evil Dead Rise, but the “king” in this case is not Ash Williams (he’s not in this one), but Super Mario. Now in its third week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is still on top, adding another $58 million to its domestic total (which is now at $434 million). That’s a ways ahead of Evil Dead Rise, which opened with $23 million, and even more of a ways ahead of third place’s Covenant, with the Guy Ritchie war movie opening with $6 million. Finishing out the top five are John Wick: Chapter 4 and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, both of which made over $5 million.
The bottom half of the top 10 features Air ($4.9 million, $41 million after three weeks), The Pope’s Exorcist ($3.3 million, $14 million after two weeks), and Renfield ($3 million and $13 million after two weeks), with the supremely divisive Beau Is Afraid climbing up to ninth with a gradually expanding rollout and Makoto Shinkai’s delightful Suzume landing in 10th. Outside of the top 10, Chevalier and Somewhere In Queens make their debuts, and Avatar: The Way Of Water makes an Earth Day return to theaters and soaks up another $600,000. Hey, why are we celebrating Earth Day with an Avatar movie that explicitly does not take place on Earth? Sure it has environmentalist and conservationist themes, but Jake Sully isn’t out there killing whalers on Earth, he’s doing it on Pandora. How To Blow Up A Pipeline is right there, playing on 530 screens, make that the Earth Day movie! Put Jake Sully in it if you need to, just hanging around in the background.
Anyway, here’s the top 10, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie
- Evil Dead Rise
- The Covenant
- John Wick: Chapter 4
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
- Air
- The Pope’s Exorcist
- Renfield
- Beau Is Afraid
- Suzume
39 Comments
Your broken numeric list puts a “1″ next to both Mario and Evil Dead. I’m also curious about just how much money Beau is Afraid made (I’m one of the people that saw it this weekend).
According to Box Office Mojo, it made a little over $3M.
And supposedly got an F cinema scream…so I’m wondering if that kinda score will get more or less people to watch it.
2.7 mil i think
Was it any good? We’ve been on a run of “Ari Aster is a must watch” but this one seems high concept, not much fun, and pretentious as hell.
I reviewed it here:https://thepopculturists.blogspot.com/2023/04/this-weekend-in-pop-culture-april-21-23.html#comment-6168216064
it’s not really pretentious. there’s no pretense and barely any subtext, either. but i thought it was hilarious.
In a lucky twist of fate I got to see both Mario and D&D this weekend and loved them both in different ways. I really don’t get the hate SMB got. It wasn’t high art but it was fun and breezy. Perfect 90 minute family film. My only complaint were the needle drops of random music that really shows it’s illumination(home of Shrek) roots. “No sleep till Brooklyn” was fine and worked in context but the kill bill fight theme, “I need a hero” and “Take on me” could have easily been replaced by Mario music like many of the scenes.
Dreamworks did Shrek Illumination definitely follows that playbook tho
I always confuse those two, I think because the Universal theme parks have characters from both studios there
It doesn’t help that NBC Universal owns both Illumination and now DreamWorks. In fact, Illumination is the one making the next Shrek movie, so you can say it is the “Home of Shrek” now.
To your point about the song drops tho; they really are almost interchangeable companies for animated features.
I don’t get it either. It’s not some particularly deep movie, but it was very charming and fun. I’m convinced that the D&D movie got completely screwed over by its studio-distributor (Paramount). Why would you stick that a week before the Mario movie came out? Even if it had had a monster opening weekend, it still would have been slaughtered by Mario the next weekend. It really should have come out in August.
Yeah, it did really well opening weekend too. As someone who’s been playing D&D for a long time I really found it charming. Without going meta it felt like watching a movie based on people playing D&D. The speaking to the dead scene especially so. In a normal narrative they would have gotten a corpse, asked if the questions and been on with the story but in a D&D adventure the players would manage to screw it up and have to dig up half the battlefield before getting the info they needed. Honestly I was very surprised they resisted the urge to do the modern music needle drops. I could see a version of the movie where they did that. I’m not even opposed to the idea since from a meta perspective modern music being played while playing D&D happens all the time. Sure some DMs craft period accurate sound scapes for their games but you are just as likely to have one who just throws on some Led Zepplin.
I’d say the most meta thing about D&D was the cameos by the live action versions of the kids from the 80’s cartoon series.Which made me want to see that movie more than the one I was watching. I say that as someone who really liked the D&D film and hope it gets a sequel.
The D&D movie got slaughtered by the fact that it was D&D. Stranger Things might* be a big hit, but it doesn’t have D&D in the title.
Nerds (and studio execs) have been consistently overestimating the nerd market share since at least Snakes On A Plane. If it doesn’t have general audience appeal, it’s not going to be successful.*Netflix “hits” are suspect anyways, since there’s no independent verification or hard numbers to evaluate the way there is with box office.
The D&D movie got slaughtered by the fact that it was D&D. Stranger Things might* be a big hit, but it doesn’t have D&D in the title.
I’ve never been a D&D fan or player, but I went to see it with my wife (also not a D&D player) on opening weekend just because it looked like a fun fantasy adventure movie. And we both liked it a lot. I would hope that the D&D name isn’t scaring people away, because it was a lot of fun even for people with no prior knowledge/fanhood of D&D. I hope it makes enough money to justify a sequel because the reviews were generally positive and I think it could build a bigger audience on streaming.
yeah just because something has brand recognition doesn’t mean that recognition comes with anything.and to everyone else’s point, if this had come out early feb before ant-man it probably would have done great. everyone thinks they need the ‘big format’ theatres, but it doesn’t matter.shazam 2 is another good example. you really think that movie would have bombed harder if it had come out the same time as avatar? nah it probably would have done slightly better, and at least you could blame avatar. but no, they needed the (empty) imax theatres.
I’m not sure it could have come out in February – they might have not had the CGI finished yet. But it definitely could have come out in August this year, and probably done a lot better.
definitely earlier or later, not at the end of a month that already had 5 major releases, each of which kind of appealed to a different group that might have seen it, with a major movie coming out right after that is DEFINITELY your audience.hopefully it cleans up on VOD. it was a blast.
There’s probably some truth to that. Maybe they should have given it a more generic fantasy name, and saved the “Dungeons & Dragons” until they actually had a couple successful D&D movies out and could openly call themselves a film franchise.
Take On Me is in there because it was the #1 song the week that the NES launched in the USA.
That may be so but it still felt very out of place for that scene. But it’s a minor issue with a fun movie
they also tried to use van halen’s jump for the climax because it was apparently the number 1 song when the game came out…but more stupidly i imagine it’s because mario jumps. the directors fought hard and got to use the real mario music. sounds like the pop music was pushed by the studio.
I am guessing most of the “hate” stems from Chris Pratt’s involvement.Disliking anything he is involved in, seems to be the hip trend these days.
Thank you! It’s like online reviewers are trying to outcompete how edgy and adult they can be by taking it out on what was an enjoyable theme park ride of a film for kids! Agreed that I wouldn’t say no to an edit that takes out all the licensed music (aside from the SMB Super Show theme)
Nearly $900 million for Mario including international gross. It should almost certainly cross the $1 billion mark in the next two weeks, including hopefully a decent chunk of change in Japan when it comes out next weekend.
Saw both this and D&D and honestly much preferred D&D. Been out of touch with Nintendo for a loooooong time (awful company) but saw the movie because I wanted that nostalgia kick from my childhood. Yeah, it was a fun movie, but that’s all I really got out of it, some nostalgic fun. Wasn’t expecting high art, but I wanted at least some sort of substance, I guess? Good movie for kids and of course that was the aim, but I didn’t get full enjoyment out of it as an adult, even compared to the Sonic movies that I thoroughly enjoyed despite them being goofy. Also wasn’t crazy with Chris Pratt as Mario, he didn’t feel “Mario” to me. Perhaps Mario just isn’t for me anymore. Still a good enough movie, but the sales are definitely due to it simply being “Mario”. Even if it were terrible it’d likely be doing fantastically.
Mario hits $870 mil and still not open in Japan (will open at 28th April apparently).and yup, film goers is eating good with John Wick 4, followed by Dungeon & Dragons, then Mario, and now Evil Dead.
i really want to watch SMB but after watching the first ten minutes of a CAM copy of the film and THAT kill bill music cue, i died a little inside lol. I don’t think a SMB film needs real worl music cues.
tbf that’s probably the most egregious one aside from Take on Me. The other songs mostly work aside from the fact that Holding out for a Hero was already in Shrek 2
Ash Williams (he’s not in this one) Well, there’s your problem right there. You can’t make an Evil Dead movie without Ash, and it’s silly that they even tried. No wonder this bombed.Some franchises just don’t work without their lead character. You think the Mario movie would have made so much money if it had been about Waluigi? Actually, it would have made three times as much. They fucked up.
Evil Dead Rise didn’t bomb. It made half its money back in a single weekend. We’ll see if it has legs, but I imagine it will be profitable. I imagine like most horror movies it will be, it just won’t make SMB money.
Bomb? $23 million is a damn fine opening for an R-rated horror movie. Especially one that was originally going to go straight to streaming. It’s the 9th biggest opening weekend of the year, and the only R-horror films that have beat it in the last 12 months are Screams 5 and 6 and Halloween Ends.
it didn’t bomb, it’s a huge hit.
It didn’t bomb. Re-evaluate how you judge things, maybe.
did you miss the fact that this is a direct sequel to the Evil Dead remake which also didn’t feature Ash Williams (except I think in a post credit cameo)
Any guesses on how long this will be staying in theatres? My dad wanted to take my nephew two weeks ago but Dad got pretty sick with the season change. He seemed to think it would be done playing by now. I’d like to see them catch it.
At least two more months. The way it is making money it isn’t going anywhere for a while.