‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Smashes $500 Million at Domestic Box Office

Wahoo! The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed $500 million at the domestic box office, becoming one of only 19 films to ever surpass that benchmark.

In its fifth weekend of release, the movie collected a huge $18.5 million from 3,909 North American theaters and landed in second place behind Disneys Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($116 million).

At this point, the animated video game adaptation from Universal, Illumination and Nintendo is the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America with $518 million and globally with $1.15 billion. Its the first movie from Illumination, the company behind Despicable Me and Sing, to hit the $500 million mark at the domestic box office. Also this weekend, Mario surpassed Toy Story 4 ($1.07 billion) to become the fifth-biggest animated movie of all time.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie opened in theaters on April 5 and generated a towering $204 million in its first five days of release, notching the biggest opening weekend of the year and the second-biggest debut ever for an animated movie. Thanks to repeat business from family audiences, as well as brand recognitionand nostalgia for the popular Nintendo game, Mario held the No. 1 spot for four consecutive weeks.

Directed by Aaron Horvath andMichael Jelenic, the movie featuring the voices of Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy and Jack Black follows the Brooklyn-based plumbers known as Mario and Luigi, who are sucked into the mystical Mushroom Kingdom. Along with Princess Peach, they prepare to stop the mighty Bowser from total domination.