Box Office: ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Escalates To Best Third Weekend For Animated Feature; ‘Evil Dead Rise’ Raises Impressive Opening

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is staying on track breaking animated feature box office records with the best third weekend for animation. At the same time, Evil Dead Rise is catching up with its other pandemic genre hits as it reaches $23.5 million at the box office.

Most people have been worried that the end of spring break meant fewer kids would go to the theatres as they return to school, meaning less profit. However, its current box office earnings show this fear is unfounded. The Mario Bros. have been racking up enough points this past weekend to arrive at $58.2 million, beating The Incredibles 2’s $46.4 million earnings on its third weekend. With these earnings, Nintendo’s famous plumbers passed the $400 million mark yesterday after 18 days, second only to The Incredibles 2, passing it in 15 days. All of this combined indicates that The Super Mario Bros. Movie can earn about $434.3 million by the end of the day, making it the third highest-grossing Universal film of all time at the domestic box office. This record is just behind 1982’s E.T.: The Extraterrestrial ($437.1 million lifetime total) and 2015’s Jurassic World ($653.4 million). 

Mario and Luigi aren’t the only ones raking in impressive numbers at the box office, as seen in this opening weekend for the fifth installment in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise. Starting with $10.3 million on Friday and $8.2 million yesterday, the deadites have managed to scrounge up a current $23.5 million in the domestic box office, putting up alongside other impressive pandemic genre openings like Cocaine Bear ($23.3 million) and The Black Phone ($23.6 million). While not as remarkable as the Mario brothers’ weekend earnings, it’s still enough to warrant praise for Warner Bros. moving from an HBO Max-only release after positive responses in test screenings. 

By offering a simple hook like Black Phone’s masked kidnapper and Cocaine Bear’s titular beast, Evil Dead Rise draws in an incredible audience with its focus on a demonic mother. Thanks to this marketing, the film pulled in about 58% of men, with 66% between 18-34 and 36% between 25-34 years old. Additionally, there was a strong turnout of Latino and Hispanic audiences at 35% and Caucasian audiences at 33%, alongside Black and Asian audiences both at 16%. 

“The filmmakers made a scary movie, and the Warner Bros marketing team nailed it with evil moms,” domestic distribution head Jeff Goldstein cheers.

Below is a list of the top 10 films for today’s domestic box office draws (via The Numbers)

1. The Super Mario Bros. Movie Gross: $18,130,000, Total Gross: $434,329,610
2. Evil Dead Rise Gross: $4,900,000, Total Gross: $23,500,000
3. John Wick: Chapter 4 Gross: $1,720,000, Total Gross: $168,880,254
4. AIR Gross: $1,679,991, Total Gross: $41,767,952
5. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant Gross: $1,658,614, Total Gross: $6,282,787
6. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Gross: $1,565,000, Total Gross: $82,187,000
7. The Pope’s Exorcist Gross: $925,000, Total Gross: $14,938,718
8. Renfield Gross: $820,000, Total Gross: $13,622,945
9. Beau is Afraid Gross: $678,303 Total Gross: $3,147,189
10. Suzume Gross: $505,000, Total Gross: $8,427,343