Level two complete.
Despite a bevy of new competitors at the box office, it was another no-doubter sort of weekend for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Mario and Luigi took the Rainbow Road all the way to No. 1 and left the competition in its multicolored dust.
Just how big was Mario Bros.’ second frame? The estimated $87 million it earned in North America was more than the combined gross of everything else at the multiplex. Its total earnings now stand at $347.8 million, which makes it 2023’s biggest film so far. The Italian-American brothers have banked nearly as much overseas ($330.1 million), bringing its global earnings to a Kong-sized $678 million. Stick that in a pipe and have a piranha plant eat it.
The rest of the field, including six new wide releases, couldn’t make a dent in Mario Bros.’ momentum. Still, they all made more money than you or I did last weekend.
The Pope’s Exorcist was a surprise second-place finisher. One of two spiritually soaked possession-themed movies to be released this week (!), the Russell Crowe horror flick scared up an estimated $9.2 million—above prognosticator’s expectations.
Renfield finished below those same expectations. Most experts thought the vampire movie would suck in around $10-12 million and lay a stake on second place. Instead, when the sun came up on Monday morning, Renfield had finished fourth (behind third-place John Wick: Chapter 4 and its $7.9 million), earning just $7.8 million. I wonder, given the fact that there were three horror-tinged new releases this week, if there just weren’t enough box-office victi—er, viewers to go around.
Air closed out the top five with $7.7 million.
The four other new releases finished outside the top five. The best-of-the-rest of the newbies proved to be Suzume, an anime juggernaut in China that hasn’t fared as well in the states. It earned just $2.8 million, according to Box Office Mojo, which put it in seventh place.
Mafia Mamma finished eighth with around $2 million. The Christian R-rated horror film Nefarious (about a death-row killer who may-or-may-not be possessed) landed in 10th place with $1.3 million. Sweetwater, a sweet biopic of one of the NBA’s first Black players, couldn’t make a shot. It earned just $350,000, despite playing on more than 1,200 screens, and took 12th.
2 Responses
-I’m kind of surprised to hear Suzume isn’t doing better (coming out so soon after Mario might not have been good for it), since critical and public opinion seem to be very good.
-Just had to stop by and share that this line from PluggedIn’s review of “Beau is Afraid” was hilarious: “Typically at Plugged In, we try not to tell you what to do regarding a given piece of entertainment…”
They do EVERY. SINGLE. REVIEW!! 😂 Essentially everything they write ends with “go see this” or “we’ve deemed this bad and you shouldn’t go see it.” (Spoiler alert: how they make these judgments basically boils down to, “Christian or kids movie = good, almost anything else = bad.”
I’m not sure if the writer for that review has a great sense of humor and was being cheeky, or just lacks self awareness, but either way that was pretty hysterical.