Super Mario Galaxy The Movie is turning a profit. The production cost of the film is US$110 million, and the publicity and distribution costs are usually estimated at twice the production cost (the relationship between publicity and production costs is never 1:1, but this is the most reliable and simple estimation method). Taking into account the theater's box office split, the final profit and loss line is about US$250 million. That's about it - I'm not an industry expert.
But compared with its predecessor in 2023, the film’s box office ceiling is far less high. The previous work ultimately earned an astonishing box office of US$1.3 billion, successfully launching a new series of IPs. Critics have received mixed reviews, but audience ratings remain high. The general view among many industry commentators is that "Galaxy" may not reach the astonishing heights of its predecessor, but it will not be too far off.
Now that the film has been released for several weeks, "Super Mario Galaxy The Movie" is still the box office champion this year, and this position will most likely not be shaken in the next month or two. However, its global cumulative box office growth has seriously stagnated, and its daily box office decline has been very dismal. According to the film and television industry media "Deadline", as of the writing of this article, the film's domestic box office in North America was US$350 million.
The industry media also estimated that the film's global box office has reached close to US$700 million. Don't get me wrong, its box office growth won't stop there. But if you look at websites like InstallBase, you will find that senior forum users with decades of experience in box office analysis now believe that the film's final box office will most likely fall between US$950 million and US$1.05 billion. I even think the final number may be lower. Time will give the final answer.
So, what exactly happened? Is this something worth worrying about? At this point, it's likely that the novelty of the Mario movie has worn off after the first one was released. That's not to say the sequel was a failure, again, it's still profitable and there's enough demand for this type of film. But the question is essentially a matter of simple arithmetic: What if this is the new box office ceiling for the series? At that point, you'll still have a valuable film IP, but you'll lose the growth momentum that Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment might have had high hopes for.
The "Super Mario" movie from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment will surpass the box office mark of US$350 million on Sunday and top the box office in its third weekend with a box office result of approximately US$30 million. Although the sequel's box office performance is about $60 million behind the first "Super Mario" movie, it has become the highest-grossing Hollywood movie so far this year, and the global box office is on track to exceed $700 million.
The above content is quoted from The Hollywood Reporter. It is not difficult to see that industry insiders are quite optimistic about this. However, those who originally thought that this film would surpass its predecessor can only comfort themselves by knowing that it can at least achieve about 70% of the box office performance of its predecessor. This is certainly a win, but it may not be enough for Universal to remain fully optimistic about and continue to expand the series' production scale in the coming years.