Movie theaters are struggling to recover from the pandemic, in part because once-reliable family audiences have drifted away. Last year, family films — largely animated — accounted for 17 percent of global ticket sales, about half of what they were in 2019.
Over the weekend, however, Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” catered to families on a stunning scale, generating an estimated $146.4 million in ticket sales in theaters across the United States and Canada, for a total of $204.6 million. since arriving on Wednesday. The PG-rated movie cost Illumination Entertainment and Nintendo about $100 million to make.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” about Brooklyn plumbers who get zapped into a magical and treacherous realm known as the Mushroom Kingdom, collected an additional $173 million overseas — a result that a Hollywood trade news site called “plumb insane ‘, noting that it was similar to the results for Universal mega-franchises like ‘Fast and Furious’ and ‘Jurassic World’.
Are family movies back – all the way back, to the extent that Hollywood can count on them as relatively certain things again?
Studio executives and movie theater owners were practically doing cartwheels over the weekend as they yelled, “Yeah!”
“This is just extraordinary,” Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic theater distribution, said Sunday. “The numbers just kept growing as the weekend progressed.”
Box office analysts were more cautious. As the dominant provider of family entertainment, Walt Disney Studios must deliver a theatrical animated hit before a true recovery can be announced, said David A. Gross, a film consultant and box office authority. The last five animated films Disney has released in theaters have been ticket sales disappointments. (Those include “Strange World” and “Lightyear” last year, and “Encanto,” “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Ron’s Gone Wrong” in 2021, a pandemic-stricken year.)
“There are still some question marks around family films,” said Mr. Gross in an email. Disney has two animated movies in the works: “Elemental,” set in a world where inhabitants are made of fire, water, earth, and air, arrives in June; and “Wish,” a musical about a young girl and a star falling from the sky, is due out in November.
Taking the kids to the movies can be expensive — up to $110 for a family of four in New York City, and that’s without popcorn ($9.29 for a small) or a single soda ($7). Families also got used to watching new animated movies at home during the pandemic, as Disney Pixar films like “Luca,” “Turning Red,” and “Soul” debuted on its streaming service, bypassing theaters entirely. Movies on streaming services are “free,” or so it seems to anyone who already has a subscription to Disney+ ($8 per month for the basic version).
Within the media industry
For the weekend in North America, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was easily No. 1. Second place was a bit of a photo finish, with “John Wick: Chapter 4” (Lionsgate), “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (Paramount) and “Air” (Amazon) are estimated to have raised about $14 million each.
“Air,” directed by Ben Affleck, has grossed about $20 million from 3,500 domestic movie screens since its arrival on Wednesday, a total Mr. Gross called “excellent.” He noted that sports dramas—”Air” is about Nike’s efforts in the 1980s to lure a young Michael Jordan to his struggling brand of basketball—usually grossed about $5.4 million in ticket sales.
The turnout for “Air” confirmed Amazon’s decision to release the well-reviewed movie in theaters, where it will run exclusively for at least a month before becoming available on the company’s Prime Video streaming service. For the entrenched Amazon, the theatrical release is something of a loss leader – a way for Prime Video to compete for top talent, who want their films shown on the big screens. Analysts estimate Amazon paid $130 million for the rights to “Air” and spent another $50 million on marketing.
“Air” is the first film from Artists Equity, a production company formed by Mr. Affleck, Matt Damon and Red Bird Capital.
But the weekend belonged to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Among certain demographics, the movie felt like a cultural event, or what Mr. Gross called “moviegoing urgency in action.” That was no coincidence: Marketers at Universal carpet bombarded televised sporting events (March Madness, NFL Championships, the NBA All-Star Game, the Super Bowl) with promos and orchestrated a stunt on “The Tonight Show” in which members of the the film’s voice cast (Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Keegan-Michael Key) sang Mario’s theme song.
Universal’s theme parks around the world helped fuel the fire. Universal Studios Hollywood recently opened Super Nintendo World, a lavishly themed expansion featuring the Mario brothers. The attraction has been a runaway success, with early access tickets selling out every day since it opened on February 17.
Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore, noted that “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” delivered the biggest opening ever for an animated film that is not a sequel, dethroning “The Secret Life of Pets” (2016), and the one second-largest opening on record for an animated feature. “Incredibles 2” (Disney-Pixar) ranks #1, with $183 million collected in the first three days of 2018.
Universal has transformed itself into an animation powerhouse under the leadership of its president, Donna Langley. She oversees two cartoon factories: Illumination, founded by Chris Meledandri (“Despicable Me,” “Ice Age”), and DreamWorks Animation, which made “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” an Oscar-nominated sequel that became a a paltry $12.4 million in ticket sales in December and eventually raised $480 million worldwide. Universal’s upcoming animated films include “Strays,” an R-rated dog comedy set to hit theaters in June. The studio is also working on a reboot of the “Shrek” franchise.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” received mixed to negative reviews. But the instant success among ticket buyers — who gave the film an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls — adds to a recent trend in Hollywood: studios, clamoring for established, globally compelling intellectual property, finally appear to be code to have cracked for adapting video games for the big screen.
The movie industry’s turbulent history with the genre began 30 years ago, when the first video game-based movie, “Super Mario Bros.”, became a hall-of-fame failure. In recent years, studios have once again become enamored with game adaptations, leading to such successes as “Sonic the Hedgehog” (Paramount) and “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” (Warner Bros.). On television, ‘The Last of Us’ (HBO) and ‘The Witcher’ (Netflix) are game hits.
Mr. Orr, Universal’s distribution president, noted that “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which was shown in 3,343 movie theaters in the United States and Canada, benefited from nostalgia. Nintendo introduced its Mario Bros. games in the 1980s. About 26 percent of the weekend crowd was over the age of 35.
“Illumination and Nintendo teamed up to make a movie that fans love,” said Orr. “People wanted to come out and be fully entertained by these characters they’ve known for decades.”
