Super Mario Galaxy Movie becomes 2026's biggest box office hit so far

Nintendo’s biggest win outside the console business is now a box-office stat: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie had climbed to $629 million worldwide by April 12, putting it at the top of 2026’s film chart so far and showing how far Mario now travels beyond games.

The numbers underline how broad that reach has become. Variety put the film at about $308.1 million domestic and $321 million foreign, with $83.5 million coming from 81 international territories in its second weekend alone. Mexico led overseas markets with $47.8 million, followed by the United Kingdom and Ireland at $37.4 million, Germany at $29 million, and France at $23.9 million. In North America, Deadline reported a second-weekend haul of $69 million from 4,284 theaters, a 48% drop from opening weekend that reads as sturdy for a family blockbuster rather than a front-loaded event movie.

That stability matters because the film has not been powered by critical consensus. Eurogamer noted that the sequel opened on April 1 in the United States with $34 million on its first Wednesday, then set a record for the best April Wednesday ever at the box office, even as Metacritic settled at 37 and the response was broadly unfavorable. The gap between review scores and ticket sales is the story here: Mario did not need unanimous critical praise to pull in crowds, and that makes the brand feel less like a one-off hit and more like a dependable piece of Nintendo’s media machine.

The milestone also sharpens the business angle for Nintendo, Illumination, and Universal Pictures. Deadline said the film is already the ninth-highest-grossing Illumination title worldwide and the third-highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time globally, behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie and A Minecraft Movie. That places Nintendo’s characters in a rare tier of cross-media assets, where a familiar face from the game shelf can anchor a global theatrical rollout.

Variety said the film still looks capable of pushing toward $1 billion, though later-year competition could complicate that run. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, and Avengers: Doomsday are the tentpoles most likely to challenge Mario’s year-end crown. Even so, the current result already says plenty about Nintendo’s next move: every strong Mario turn at the box office makes the company’s film strategy look less experimental and more central to how it markets the brand across games, movies, and whatever crossover comes next.