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News The Super Mario Bros. Movie hits $500 million, biggest video game adaptation ever

Clov said:
What are you talking about? What do rich Hollywood executives have to be scared about? Do you actually think that there's a big group of Hollywood executives who are upset that a video game movie is making money? Is there a hidden cabal of producers who want to... make video game movies in a Hollywood style, that will be thrown into shambles with the success of... a movie based on one of the biggest gaming franchises?

All they're going to see is an opportunity to make more money. If anything, they're overjoyed; now they can try to run video game adaptations into the ground as much as they have superhero movies and cinematic universes.
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They messed with gamers...
 
Brock Reiher said:
Right. But when it comes to Hollywood video game adaptations normally executives feel the need to do something to turn away people and mess up that formula, live making it live action or giving Sonic a cop friend. This time they didn't and it paid off.

And correct me if I'm wrong, this is doing much better than ready player one, yeah? It's doing better than Frozen. Obviously they did something right.
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Making a lot of money and doing something right aren't really related at all. Especially not when you're tying a strong i.p. to a product. Rise of Skywalker was absolutely terrible and still got a billion, for an example. Meanwhile, Sonic 2 made 0.4 billion, which on the relative strength of that ip is pretty much a resounding success. It would have taken something going cataclysmically wrong for Mario to drop anywhere near as low as Sonic, and I'm pretty sure I said before somewhere that they'd have been aiming for a billion with this movie at bare minimum. (And that something as low as Sonic would be a death knell for the entire Illumination-Nintendo partnership).

There's not actually anything they could have done to make a modern mario movie not make a ridiculous amount of money as long as it had the bare minimum of production values. There's definitely no just world where Spiderverse or Puss in boots : The last wish make sub half a billion while this rides to over both of them added together, but that's why studios always chase IP like this in the first place, and I'm certainly not a fan of the implication that what those two movies did wrong was not be bland enough.

Clov said:
All they're going to see is an opportunity to make more money. If anything, they're overjoyed; now they can try to run video game adaptations into the ground as much as they have superhero movies and cinematic universes.
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Yeah, hope everyones ready for the crap wave we always see when this kind of thing happens, like when Hunger Games blew up and suddenly there were a glut of mediocre Dystopian YA films within years just trying to ride that wave.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
There's not actually anything they could have done to make a modern mario movie not make a ridiculous amount of money as long as it had the bare minimum of production values. There's definitely no just world where Spiderverse or Puss in boots : The last wish make sub half a billion while this rides to over both of them added together, but that's why studios always chase IP like this in the first place, and I'm certainly not a fan of the implication that what those two movies did wrong was not be bland enough.
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This just isn't true. Detective Pikachu for example didn't do nearly as well despite being as big of an IP. What they did for the Mario movie may seem obvious in retrospect, but it is almost never done. And in this case good decision making paid off. I wouldn't say Spider verse was better than this either, both are great well made animated movies. Frozen 2 was obviously better but this has a bit broader appeal so the higher earnings make sense.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
There's not actually anything they could have done to make a modern mario movie not make a ridiculous amount of money as long as it had the bare minimum of production values. There's definitely no just world where Spiderverse or Puss in boots : The last wish make sub half a billion while this rides to over both of them added together, but that's why studios always chase IP like this in the first place, and I'm certainly not a fan of the implication that what those two movies did wrong was not be bland enough.
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I’m not sure it’s fair to say the movie only succeeded due to the brand strength of Mario despite being (effectively) a debut while comparing it to films in the Spider-Man and Shrek IPs, both of which are proven massive film earners.
 
Mekanos said:
IP is king nowadays, and you can bet there are a lot of Hollywood executives seeing these bing bing wahoo numbers and thinking, holy shit what have we got that can get a slice of this pie? Don't forget this is the industry that tried to launch a cinematic universe to compete with Marvel with the Mummy. The market analyst can tell the boss whatever they want, the boss sees an opportunity for growth and they will take it.
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Then they will learn as quickly as Universal did that they are severely overestimating their appeal, cuz there is no universe where Spyro the Movie will be pulling numbers easily. Not even Pikachu managed to do so, and that's a rare video game icon that even my grandmother knows.
 
How in the hell can any of you look at the number of videogame adaptations from the last 30 years, the utter, utter dross we’ve had to endure, and with a straight face say you’re worried that this one film will be the tipping point? That this will be the thing that means we get a bunch of shitty adaptations? It’s literally impossible for us to get a wave of shitty videogame cash-ins because we’ve all been drowning beneath that particular tsunami of shite for decades already.
 
A Pokemon movie without battles, rivals and gym leaders is like a Rocky movie without boxing.

I liked Detective Pikachu well enough, but I'm not sure there's any universe where that represents the ceiling of the franchises appeal.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
There's not actually anything they could have done to make a modern mario movie not make a ridiculous amount of money as long as it had the bare minimum of production values. There's definitely no just world where Spiderverse or Puss in boots : The last wish make sub half a billion while this rides to over both of them added together, but that's why studios always chase IP like this in the first place, and I'm certainly not a fan of the implication that what those two movies did wrong was not be bland enough.
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They could have made a Paper Mario Movie or having a movie with more original characters and while that would have likely resulted in a more interesting/unique story or Artstyle, I‘m very sure that it wouldn‘t had been this out of the gate success we are experiencing right now. I even think that Cappy would had been to foreign as a character to most people.

This movie really builds up on that even those people who only played a few rounds in Mariokart can recognize stuff. It‘s a very close adaption with the goal to make it still enjoyable for as many people as possible regardless if you are a child, hardcore fan or someone with only passive experience of the Franchise and it achieves that masterfully.
 
Downplaying the movie massive success to ”IP” strength is such an odd take considering the amount of flop Video Game adaptations on the back very strong IPs.

They did something very right with this movie.
 
Multiverse said:
Downplaying the movie massive success to ”IP” strength is such an odd take considering the amount of flop Video Game adaptations on the back very strong IPs.

They did something very right with this movie.
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Yeah normally having the IP association can kill a movie because of angry hardcore fans lol
 
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Mister Gideon said:
How in the hell can any of you look at the number of videogame adaptations from the last 30 years, the utter, utter dross we’ve had to endure, and with a straight face say you’re worried that this one film will be the tipping point? That this will be the thing that means we get a bunch of shitty adaptations? It’s literally impossible for us to get a wave of shitty videogame cash-ins because we’ve all been drowning beneath that particular tsunami of shite for decades already.
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A movie that respects the source material and makes a billion is bound to be a tipping point for many.
Hopefully companies such as Capcom learn from this.
 
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Going from capeshit to vidyashit is often framed as a monkey paw ordeal, but as mid as the Mario movie was, I'd take that over propaganda reinforcing the negative status quo.
 
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Mister Gideon said:
How in the hell can any of you look at the number of videogame adaptations from the last 30 years, the utter, utter dross we’ve had to endure, and with a straight face say you’re worried that this one film will be the tipping point? That this will be the thing that means we get a bunch of shitty adaptations? It’s literally impossible for us to get a wave of shitty videogame cash-ins because we’ve all been drowning beneath that particular tsunami of shite for decades already.
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Because those were spread out pretty far after the 90s. These have now been happening almost yearly at this point and productions could escalate that we're getting adaptations regularly.
 
Hajeman said:
www.hollywoodreporter.com

Box Office: ‘Super Mario’ Hits $872M Globally, ‘Evil Dead Rise’ Opens to Big $23.5M in U.S.

Guy Ritchie's military action drama 'The Covenant' also debuted this weekend, while Ari Aster's mind-bending specialty film 'Beau Is Afraid' expanded nationwide
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com

Illumination and Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie remains a monster at the multiplex as it crosses the $400 million mark domestically and $866.1 million globally
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Next weekend it’s hitting a billion.
 
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