Entertainment

Box Office Collection-Super Mario Leads With $56M, Evil Dead Rise Strong With Estimated $22M

The Super Mario Bros. Movie from Illumination and Universal remained a juggernaut in its third weekend at the multiplex, topping the $400 million mark domestically and $800 million globally to finish with a remarkable $871.8 million on Sunday.

It simply won the weekend race in North America with an estimated $58.2 million from 4,350 theaters for a domestic cume of $434.3 million over Sunday. It earned an additional estimated $70.7 million overseas for a foreign total of $437.5 million.

Super Mario continues to make history. It was also the seventh-biggest third weekend among all films at the domestic box office, after beating Spider-Man: No Way Home ($56 million), and the biggest for an animated title, unadjusted for inflation.

The Super Mario Bros. Mario is currently the highest-grossing animated movie in Universal history at the domestic box office behind Minions: The Rise of Gru ($369.7 million) and the third-highest of all Universal films behind Jurassic World and E.T. Alien, unedited.

With its multi-generational appeal, the film adaptation of the Nintendo video game is playing more like a blockbuster for all audiences than an animated underdog, becoming the first film of 2023 to join the billion-dollar club.

A strong No. 2 at the domestic box office was the new supernatural offering from Warner Bros. Evil Dead Rise, the fifth installment of the trendy series created by Sam Raimi. The film opened to an estimated $23.5 million from 3,402 theaters, beating expectations and on par with the recent horror hit Cocaine Bear. Overseas, it grossed $16.8 million from 58 markets for a global debut of $40.3 million.

Directed and written by Lee Cronin, the movie was well-received by critics and received a B CinemaScore from viewers. Evil Dead Rise stars Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland as sisters in a perverse family tale of demonic possession. Starring Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, and Nell Fisher.

The movie was originally intended directly for HBOMax, but Warners changed course as part of its complete focus on cinema, a mandate issued when the head of Warner Bros. Discovery David Zaslav took office.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant also opened this weekend. The well-reviewed movie earned an A CinemaScore and appealed to older consumers.

The Covenant stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a US Army sergeant who returns to Afghanistan to release his former interpreter, played by Dar Salim, from the rules of the Taliban.

Lionsgate’s John Wick: Chapter 4 came in at No. 4 with an estimated $5.8M from 2,685 locations for a domestic total nearing $170M.

The big headliner at the special box office is Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, which has expanded nationwide after a stellar start in four theaters last weekend. The Joaquin Phoenix-starrer stunner came in at No. 9 with an evaluated $2.7 million from 965 locations for a domestic cume of $3.1 million.

The period drama will feature Kelvin Harrison Jr. as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a famous French nobleman, violinist, and conductor of mixed race.

Among the special holdovers was third-weekend interest in wildlife conservation documentary Picturehouse and National Geographic Documentary Films. The film grossed $44,614 from 14 theaters for an opening of $112,227 and enjoyed the third biggest weekend of the year at Angelica, New York.

Wild Life also performed well at the Angelika Pop-Up in Washington, DC, and boasts the second-highest gross of the year so far at Landmark’s Opera Plaza in San Francisco. From Oscar-winning filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelya and Jimmy Chin, Wild Life chronicles the work of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins.