The animated Super Mario Bros. film has rocketed to the top of the global box office, taking in $377m (£304m) worldwide in its opening weekend.
The new film is an origin story about how Brooklyn plumbers Mario, voiced by Chris Pratt, and Luigi (Charlie Day), fall into a rogue pipe and end up in a world populated by Nintendo’s most famous characters.
Critics have largely given the film a cold shower, but family audiences eager for Easter entertainment have turned out in droves anyway. US theaters recorded $204.6 million in box office sales, with another $173 million grossed abroad.
This means Mario has broken opening weekend records for both video game adaptations (beating Warcraft’s $210 million) and animated feature films (beating Frozen 2’s $358 million).
It also makes it the biggest opening of the year, putting Ant-Man in second place, and the second-biggest three-day American animated opening (behind Finding Dory).
Some US exhibitors attribute the film’s success to the breadth of its reach, with exit polls indicating that 59% of the audience were male and 45% were between the ages of 18 and 34. 3D projections.
Other solid performers over the holiday weekend included Ben Affleck’s Nike Air movie, John Wick: Chapter 4, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
