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Movie Monday: Are You There Box Office? It’s Me, Mario Bros. (Again.)

Level 4 complete, and we’re getting close to a high score.

For the fourth-straight weekend, The Super Mario Bros. Movie jumped the field, raced to the castle and pulled down a box-office victory. And once again, it wasn’t even close. Mario and Luigi pocketed another $40 million from North American audiences, according to early estimates, which brings its domestic total to a mustachioed $490 million.

But that’s not the biggest headline from the movie’s weekend. Add in Mario Bros.’ even more bountiful overseas earnings, and the flick has already earned more than $1 billion worldwide ($1,022,473,825, to be exact). That makes it the 11th highest-grossing animated movie ever. And by the time we reconvene next week, it could springboard past Zootopia, Finding Dory and Despicable Me 3 on the list.

Meanwhile, Evil Dead Rise continues to lurch along in second place. It now possesses another $12.2 million after this weekend, raising its grand North American total to $44.4 million. Creepy, right?

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. was the weekend’s highest-ranked newcomer. It banked $6.8 million—a bit behind Liongate’s own modest expectations—to finish third. But those who’ve seen Margaret’s movie have loved it. It sits with a 99% “freshness” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, which bodes well for its box-office run.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is in its sixth week, but it continues to make a killing. It collected another $5 million this weekend. And while that’s not nearly enough to pay off the bounty placed on its titular assassin’s head in Chapter 4, its overall tally of $176.2 million is—with enough to whittle down the national debt of a tiny island nation somewhere.

Speaking of old movies still making money, here’s one for you: Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi was rereleased this week to celebrate its 40th anniversary and earned $4.7 million to close out the weekend’s top five. If you add that to the $475.3 million that the movie made worldwide during its original 1983 run, you get … well, less than half of what Super Mario Bros. Movie has made. But c’mon, tickets were $3.15 back then!

A few other wide-release films failed to make much of an impact. The bloody Australian flick SISU pocketed $3.3 million in its first weekend of work, finishing 10th. That allowed it to slip past Big George Foreman, a Christian boxing film that punched its way to $3 million. And Polite Society didn’t make much of a ripple in our society, genteelly collecting a mere $800,000 for 15th.

Will Mario Bros. hop to a fifth-straight win next weekend? A few galactic Guardians may have something to say about that.

Oh, and just a little reminder: Be sure to watch The Plugged In Show Aftercast today at 3 PM (MST) LIVE on Instagram (@pluggedinteam)! We’ll be talking about all these films, discussing our upcoming podcast episode and answering your questions.

paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

7 Responses

  1. -Considered seeing Return of the Jedi this weekend but didn’t want to break my Disney boycott so I decided to go with Big George Foreman instead. It was a really good movie, and probably my favorite film of the year so far.

    I’m glad Mario is doing really well. I don’t think I like it nearly as much as last year’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but it’s a really good family film and paves the way for more Nintendo movies.

    Seriously, let’s get those Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong movies made!

        1. -you’re right, you’re right. But he did talk in the 80’s cartoon zelda, so there’s always a chance.

  2. -I don’t know why the spoiler in Bob Hoose’s review for “Sisu” was necessary. It didn’t really add anything to the concerns about violent content, except to explain WHY the main character is so good at killing nazis. It will neither encourage nor dissuade people from seeing the movie. I’m glad I didn’t read the review until AFTER I saw the movie yesterday with a friend. I thought it was quite satisfying. It was indeed quite violent, but not gratuitously so. And I was able to discover the nature of the character on the movie’s own terms. Including spoilers in reviews make me reluctant to read Plugged In reviews until AFTER I see the film.

  3. -If this video-game based movie did so well, I can’t wait to see how well the movie Gran Turismo does. I think that movie will send several good messages.

    1. Not all video games are cartoonish escapist fantasies. Some video games are designed to be as realistic as possible and teach practical skills. (Gran Turismo is one such game, but there are others).
    2. It is possible for games to be wholesome without being cheap, without being cartoonish, without lacking replay value, and without being so easy that they treat their players like dummies.

  4. -I grew up playing Mario games, but I’m not interested in a movie adaptation. It’s disheartening that so many of today’s TV shows, movies and video games are just repackagings of some corporation’s IP.

    Next up: a TV series based on the Harry Potter books, which were already turned into a series of perfectly decent movies. At a certain point the repetition becomes numbing and you long for something fresh.