“Super Mario Bros.” Aiming for $125 million in its opening weekend – Miscellaneous

Courtesy of Universal

Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach are gearing up to take on the box office as the Super Mario Bros. movie prepares to take over. Movie to cross the $100 million mark in its opening weekend.

Universal and Illumination’s big-screen adaptation of the popular video game, which opened in 4,000 theaters in North America on Wednesday, is looking to collect $125 million or more in its first five days of release. It will be the second release of 2023, after Disney’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($106 million) which will open to more than $100 million.

“Mario” will easily lead the domestic box office charts over last weekend’s champ, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” as well as fellow newcomer “Air,” a sports drama directed by Ben Affleck.

“D&D” ticket sales are expected to drop between 50 and 55% after its $37.2 million opening weekend. He’ll be in a close race for second place with “Air,” which opens Wednesday and aims to bring in between $16 million and $18 million over the five-day period. Amazon is bringing the $90 million-budget film to 3,507 cinemas, marking one of the rare streaming-supported films to get a traditional theatrical release.

“Mario,” directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelinek, follows the mustachioed plumber and friends as they prepare to stop the mighty Bowser from taking over the world. miscellaneous Chief film critic Owen Gleiberman praised the Super Mario Bros. movie as “sheer animated fun”, writing that “the second time around is Mario’s magic on film”.

This is a relief to fans who were burned by the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi, which became a typical example of failed video game adaptations after failing in spectacular fashion. So, despite the brand’s ubiquity — Nintendo has reportedly sold more than 413 million copies of the game and made more than $30 billion since 1985 — the next “Mario” movie wasn’t a guaranteed win for Universal, Illumination, and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. . (Besides, Pratt’s casting of the terrifying Italian plumber didn’t fare well on the Internet.)

But times and tastes have changed since the ill-fated adaptation from the ’90s. The Super Mario Bros. movie appears. Movie on the big screen (relatively) in times of grace for on-screen game stories. The genre, once riddled with more failures than successes, has seen a resurgence thanks to “Sonic the Hedgehog” and its 2022 sequel, Tom Holland’s “Uncharted” and most recently, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”

Elsewhere, Air hopes to act as counterprogramming by catering to a different kind of enthusiast—sneakerheads. Amazon Studios spent $40 million marketing the film, including an exciting premiere at SXSW. It’s not clear how long the movie is on the big screen before it airs on Prime Video — or what kind of ticket sales it would need for it to be a win for Amazon.

“Air” tells the true story of a Nike shoe salesman who pursues NBA rookie Michael Jordan to get a deal to wear their shoes. Affleck also directed the R-rated film in his first return behind the camera since 2016’s Live by Night. He and Damon play Nike CEO Sonny Vaccaro and Nike co-founder Phil Knight, respectively, while Viola Davis plays Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris.

in diverse’In a review, chief film critic Peter Debruge referred to “Air” as “the ultimate epitome of the American Dream, a funny and poignant Cinderella story about how the third-place sneaker brand wished upon a star, and how that man—and his mother—were astutely clever.” It is enough to know its value.