Nintendo and Illumination’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is already being projected to be a box office success within a single weekend. The sequel to the $1.3 billion-grossing The Super Mario Bros. Movie has only been fully out for a single day, but its opening day sales are actually higher than they were for the original film. Releasing on Wednesday, April 1 in the US, the movie has been a hit with audiences both domestically and internationally despite it being panned by critics. It’s still unclear whether this video game adaptation will match the same lofty heights as its predecessor, but it’s off to a brilliant start.
The Super Mario sequel is projected to be profitable in just one weekend
Based solely on its global box office sales on Wednesday, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has earned $68.4 million, with $33.9 million coming abroad from 78 markets and the remaining $34.5 million coming from 3,821 theaters across the US and Canada. These figures come from a April 2 report from Deadline.
Meanwhile, Variety believes that the film will earn somewhere between $350 million and $375 million worldwide over its 5-day opening weekend. Given that it has a production budget of $110 million, which is only $10 million more than The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s $100 million, the sequel only needs to make about $275 million (that’s 2.5 times the budget) to break even. So even the film earns in the low end of that range or even misses that by 20%, it will be profitable.
Last week, we believed that the film was going to break box office records, and that has already come to pass. Its $34.5 million domestic opening day, which doesn’t account for any preview sales, is the best ever in April and has set the benchmark for rest of 2026, above Project Hail Mary’s $33.1 million opening day on Friday. As a point of comparison, the first Super Mario Bros. movie brought in $31.7 million on its opening day in 2023, though it’s still behind the opening day numbers for a handful of other Illumination titles, like the $46 million for Minions (2015) and the $38.5 million for The Secret Life of Pets (2016).
The film’s international opening day haul has likewise been impressive, with it raking in $6.7 million in Mexico, $4.3 million in the UK and Ireland, $3.8 million in Germany, $3 million in Spain, and $2.9 million in France. The movie has yet to open in China, which will see a 3-day opening weekend, nor has it been made available in Nintendo’s home country of Japan when it will release on April 24 (during the country’s Golden Week holidays). Given that The Super Mario Bros. Movie made $101 million in Japan, this sequel is expected to bring a similarly large haul there as well.
On March 27, it was predicted that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie would domestically bring in $150 million to $165 million over its 3-day Friday-Sunday weekend and $185 million to $200 million for its 5-day Easter weekend. A separate April 1 report from BoxOfficeTheory generally shares this view, projecting a $188 million total for its 5-day weekend, noting that the film has incredibly broad appeal for casual audience and families. Its tracking for the movie remains “encouraging,” particularly with pre-sales getting a bump due to the marketing reveal of Fox McCloud and higher average ticket prices in 2026. However, it notes that sequels are typically more front-loaded at the box office.
The sequel has another advantage in that its competition has largely stepped aside on the theatrical release calendar. The biopic Michael, which some believe could reach the $1 billion mark too, is slated to released in three weeks on April 24, while The Devil Wears Prada 2 that reunites Meryl Streep with Anne Hathaway comes out on May 1.
