The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s early success suggested it was set to become a sensation over the pre-Easter weekend, and it has managed to surpass expectations, though it hasn’t quite surpassed the original Mario animated film.
After landing the best-ever domestic April Wednesday last week, many thought it had a real shot at topping The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s colossal $375 million global opening, but that hasn’t come to pass. The difference is minimal, however, as the reports from Entertainment Weekly and Universal Pictures owner NBCUniversal put it at $372.6m, a debut nearly identical to 2023’s original movie.
This makes The Super Mario Galaxy Movie the second-best opening for production studio Illumination, and the second-biggest global debut for a video game movie. In both cases, only The Super Mario Bros. Movie beats it. In the US market, the big five-day total reached roughly $190m, with international markets adding the rest. That’s what I call Nintendomination.
It’s also the best five-day opening weekend since Disney’s Moana 2 (2024), another large animated film. Needless to say, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has claimed the crown for best global opening of 2026, which Project Hail Mary briefly held for a couple of weeks. Expect Mario to surpass that sci-fi feature’s total haul soon, too.
It now remains to be seen how the movie performs past its opening week, but with no direct competition on the heavyweight animated film front, we’re expecting its success to continue. Clearly, then, the film’s failure to convince critics hasn’t made a dent on the audience’s overall approval; according to aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 89 percent of moviegoers enjoyed the film. CinemaScore backs up this read with an A- rating that should give Nintendo, Universal, and Illumination further encouragement to start planning the inevitable threequel.
