Man, nostalgia rears its “hey, link me up sometime down the line again” head back into our hearts because families and folks are immersing themselves into the Mario ride and pressuring others to link back up to their favorite memories with all the games. Even with all apathy and vexation of Universal Pictures hiring Chris Pratt to do his best with a mediocre Italian voiceover for Mario, people still enjoy the game universe (maybe multiverse if certain heads want to get there).
The Super Marios Bros. Movie scored $87 million in its second weekend of release, a noteworthy 41% drop that has now dispatched of Frozen 2‘s sophomore frame to ensure a new record comes under its belt for the highest-grossing second weekend for an animated film. Its legs are so firm that it wouldn’t be surprising if this feature happened to reach past the $1 billion mark before its run is over, even with a wretched release in China and whatever it can nab in Japan. The feature currently sits at $348 million domestically and $678 million globally, ensuring it’ll pass $700 million sometime in the middle of this week. It has also already toppled Warcraft and Pokemon: Detective Pikachu to become the largest video game adaptation in history. Mixed reviews cannot seem to dull its output, even when yours indeed might’ve seen some reminiscence in playing Mario Party: Island Tour on the 3DS years ago. What seems to be the new “big thing” progressing forward is the adaption of video games for the screen, as this and Sonic The Hedgehog can ensure families (and die-hard gamers) will want something to stroll right into on their night times off.
Renfield, meanwhile, stumbled with $7.7 million and landed in fourth place this weekend, while Mario and five other releases took their spots. Nicholas Cage’s gory battered Dracula wasn’t enough of a selling point for this horror comedy, and the high budget of $65 million to be combated will be “pie in the sky” at this point. Even with solid ancillary business, it has no shape or plans to beat out any other big blockbuster IPs or quieter films on the market. Scott Mendelson from The Wrap put it best: Universal disregarded all the lessons learned from The Invisible Man. A dang shame for Universal, even when it’s simultaneously blowing the markets away with Mario.
Newcomer The Pope’s Exorcist has a smaller budget and scored $9.15 million from 3,178 theaters. Nothing to scream about, but it’ll do for a Sony horror feature. Evil Dead Rise next weekend might be able to wager it having some decent legs. Sony got something “okay-ish” with Suzume with a $5 million debut as well, but the reviews are pretty stellar for director Makoto Shinkai.
John Wick: Chapter 4 got bronze this weekend with $7.925 million, bringing its domestic total to $160 million and global gross to $349 million. That makes it the highest-earning film of the series and another gold star for Keanu Reeves. Will Chapter 5 become a reality? We’ll see as Chad Stahelski toys with his brain for a bit.
Air took a 47% drop in its second weekend, putting its domestic cume around $33.3 million. Amazon did pay big bucks to acquire the rights to this film, so Ben Affleck/Matt Damon should be relatively satisfied. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves dipped likewise in its third weekend for a domestic total of $74 million. Perhaps we were wrong to praise this film a few weekends ago as it foolishly opened too close to another video-game adaptation and might’ve faired better in the late summer times—a shame for another Chris in the Hollywood hemisphere.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will wrap up in theaters with $475-480 million worldwide. Superhero fatigue will become another jarring question to unfold once Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 drops in May; we can only hope this is another tumble in the road for Marvel and the controversy surrounding Jonathan Majors settles. Otherwise, they’ll be in a heap of trouble trying to stretch out interests toward Avengers 5 & 6.
Next weekend sees the release of Evil Dead Rise and The Covenant.
