"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" Becomes Third Highest-Grossing Animated Movies of All Time

Universal and Illumination Entertainment’s movie adaptation of Nintendo’s "Super Mario Bros." video game franchise continues to dominate the box office and added around $10 million at the box office, finishing third behind the new release "Fast X" and Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3".

After a month-and-a-half in theaters,  the mega-hit adaptation is passing major milestones domestically and globally. The movie has made around $550 million stateside, and just under $700 million from overseas territories, for a running worldwide total of $1.248 billion.

This means that Super Mario has overtaken Incredibles 2’s $1.243 billion global haul to become the third highest-grossing animated film ever at the global box office. 

The movie is now only trailing the two Frozen movies. Released in 2013, the first Frozen made $1.284 billion worldwide — a figure that Super Mario could realistically overtake—  and six years later, Frozen 2 finished its worldwide run with $1.45 billion.

Along the way, "Super Mario" shot past iconic animated hits such as "Toy Story 3" ($1.068 billion), the original "The Lion King" ($986 million), and "Finding Nemo" ($936 million), as well as every Shrek and Ice Age movie, not to mention every Despicable Me and Pixar title. 

"Super Mario" is also the biggest film in Illumination Entertainment’s catalog, joining "Minions" ($1.157 billion) and "Despicable Me 3" ($1.032 billion) in the animation studio’s billion-dollar club. 

Illumination has also released two other movies that have grossed more than $900 million globally — "Despicable Me 2" ($975 million) and "Minions: The Rise of Gru" ($939 million). 

"Super Mario" has been smashing box office records ever since it debuted in the first week of April. It was expected to gross around $130 million in its five-day extended weekend but ended up making $204 million.

The movie dominated the box office for the entire month, before being dethroned by "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" in May. 

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" voice cast stars Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek, Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong, and Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike.

Mario’s original voice actor, Charles Martinet, also makes a cameo appearance in the movie.

"The Super Mario Bros. movie" is directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic from a script by Matt Fogel.

The runtime for the movie is 92 minutes and 17 seconds long. It is Nintendo's second attempt at a theatrical adventure. 1993’s "Super Mario Bros." was a cinematic disaster to put it lightly and made Nintendo keep their precious IP from leaving the gaming space for the next 30 years.

At that time, Mario practically invented the 3D platformer with classics like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine while also reaching a wider audience with his highly successful racing sub-franchise Mario Kart. Both his platforming and racing history will play a major part in this film with things like Rainbow Road and the karts found in Mario Kart fully realized for the big screen.