The Mario movie has crossed $1 billion at the box office

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a massive hit. Less than a month after its release, the Nintendo mascot’s first animated movie has crossed $1 billion at the box office, making it the first video game adaptation to cross that impressive benchmark.

The film from Nintendo and Illumination debuted on April 5 and raked in more than $204 million at the domestic box office in its first five days of release, with $146 million of that coming over the usual Friday-Sunday period.

These impressive totals gave The Super Mario Bros. Movie the second highest three-day weekend opening of any animated movie domestically, behind The Incredibles 2’s $182 million. The film did even better internationally, becoming the biggest global animated movie opening of all time with $377 million over the five-day window, breaking Frozen 2’s record of $358 million.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is also the biggest release of 2023 to date, besting Disney and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — a movie that seemed to be a bit of a disappointment for the superhero franchise juggernaut.

While Illumination is no stranger to massive openings and box office success, having previously produced the Despicable Me and Minions movies, The Super Mario Bros. Movie now has the biggest debut in the Universal-owned animation studio’s history. Illumination has had a couple of billion dollar hits in the past, with both Despicable Me 3 and the original Minions, but Mario is quickly approaching the title of the studio’s biggest movie.

Neither Illumination nor Nintendo has said anything about a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie just yet, but with such an impressive debut already, and a box office total that will likely continue to climb over the next few weeks, it seems likely that a return to the Mushroom Kingdom could be on the horizon for moviegoers.

Update (April 14): We’ve updated this story with the latest box office numbers through Thursday, April 13, which make The Super Mario Bros. Movie the top-grossing video game adaptation in cinema history.

Update (May 1): We’ve updated this story with the latest box office numbers, including the fact that it cross $1 billion internationally.