Less than a month after reports revealed that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie had made $756 million at the global box office, the latest figures by Box Office Mojo have revealed that it is now approaching the $1 billion mark. The website has reported that, as of this week, the film has made $418,6619,015 in the domestic box office, and $545,529,000 in the international box office. These combine to make up $964 million at the worldwide box office.
It is worth noting that Box Office Mojo’s reports are estimated gross revenue, and neither Universal Pictures nor Nintendo has made any official announcement regarding The Super Mario Galaxy Movie‘s worldwide box office performance. The film is reported as having been produced on a budget of $110 million, which means that, with these latest numbers, it has made back more than 8 times its production budget so far.
Whether or not The Super Mario Galaxy Movie will go on to break the $1 billion barrier remains to be seen. According to Box Office Mojo’s own database, the film currently sits at the 66th rank when compared to all-time high box office performances. The number 1 spot is still held by 2009’s Avatar, which made almost $3 billion, followed by Avengers: Endgame in second place with $2.79 billion, and Avatar: The Way of Water in third with $2.3 billion.
Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto had previously spoken about Nintendo’s recent push to adapt more of its properties into films, and said that the decision was made in order to further boost the life of its older IPs.
“Ultimately, what people remember are the IPs,” said Miyamoto. “Games become obsolete when new versions come out. But that’s incredibly sad. We started video production partly because of that sadness—seeing our creations become playable only on Virtual Console.”
As for what Nintendo or production house Illumination might have in store for the future, at least for the time being, there doesn’t seem to be any grand plan. In an interview from last month, Miyamoto, alongside Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri, revealed that character cameos like Fox McCloud were added in because they were fun, and not because there are plans to do a Super Smash Bros. Movie down the line.
“Right off the bat, I’ll say that unlike something like Super Smash Bros., I don’t think you’ll have a situation [where] all Nintendo characters would be joining,” he said. “As you know, my rule is that Pikmin can appear in any [Nintendo] series.”
“We have plenty of characters to create a movie, and yet we wanted to add a little bit of spice, a little bit of secret cameos here and there. And you’ll see that there’s one secret character that plays a big role,” he continued. “So I think there might be introductions of characters like this potentially in the future, something like that.”
“When you use the term universe, it conjures up for me this idea that there’s a group of really smart people in a room with charts up on a wall and they’re planning the next 10 years of how all the characters might be weaving in and out of movies. Our process is actually very different from that,” he explained.
