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Mario is off to another blistering start. Illumination, Nintendo, and Universal have launched The Super Mario Galaxy Movie with a huge $34 million on Wednesday alone, giving the animated sequel the biggest opening day of the year so far and setting a new benchmark for an April Wednesday release in the process.
That debut pushes past the previous April Wednesday record set by 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which opened with $31.7 million on the same midweek frame. It also edges out Project Hail Mary, which had been holding the year’s strongest launch with $33.1 million from Friday and preview grosses combined. The key detail here is simple: Mario did it without previews inflating the number. That makes the start feel even louder.
The comparison everyone will be watching is, of course, the first movie. Back in Easter 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie turned its early momentum into a massive $146.3 million three-day haul and a staggering $204.6 million over five days, still one of Illumination’s biggest domestic openings ever. This new chapter may be tracking a little lower, but not by much. Universal is currently projecting The Super Mario Galaxy Movie to reach $128.2 million across the traditional three-day weekend and roughly $186 million over five days.
Lower than the original? Yes. Small? Not even close. Those numbers would still place the sequel among the strongest animated openings in recent memory and easily make it the biggest domestic launch of the year to date in the U.S. and Canada.
There is still plenty of room for the holiday corridor to change the picture. Easter play is its own beast. Family titles can explode once schools are out and Friday crowds roll in. The first Mario film dipped 16% on Thursday, then surged 106% on Good Friday, climbed again on Saturday, and only eased back on Easter Sunday. If Galaxy Movie follows anything close to that pattern, the conversation around a $200 million five-day total will get very real very quickly.
Audience response should help. The film currently sits at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes from viewers, a strong score by any commercial standard, even if it lands slightly below the 95% audience mark earned by the 2023 hit. Critics remain far less enthusiastic. The first movie posted a 59% critics score, while the sequel is currently lower at 44%. But if the last few years have made anything clear, it is that family audiences and gamers are often playing a different game than reviewers.
That split matters less when ticket buyers keep showing up. And they are. With a reported net production cost of $110 million, only modestly above the original’s $100 million budget, the sequel is already behaving like another major theatrical win for Universal’s animation machine.
If current forecasts hold, the film will deliver the biggest five-day domestic opening since Moana 2 reached $225.4 million, and the biggest three-day bow since Wicked: For Good opened to $147 million. That is elite company, and it says a lot about how durable the Mario brand has become on the big screen.
There is another milestone hiding inside these projections. Should The Super Mario Galaxy Movie finish above $100 million for the three-day weekend, the franchise would join Shrek, Toy Story, and Minions as one of the very few animated series to produce two domestic openings above that mark. That is not just a hit. That is franchise power.
For now, all eyes are on Thursday’s hold and the inevitable Good Friday jump. One thing is already clear: Mario did not come back to play defense.
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