Not only did The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which premiered in April 2023, make a lot of money, Nintendo says it even gave a noticeable sales boost to associated Nintendo titles over the past 12 months.
In its latest quarterly report to investors, Nintendo said that the film “had a positive impact on sales of Mario related titles,” and credited it with a sales performance that saw 31 video games for Nintendo Switch sell more than a million copies over its fiscal year, which runs from April 1 to March 31.
This boost counteracted an overall sales decline for the seven-year-old Nintendo Switch line of systems, down 12.6 percent from the preceding year, and a 6.7 percent slip in the year-over-year software sales, the company said.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie, with an all-star cast of voice actors including Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and Fred Armisen, premiered April 5, 2023, drawing more than $146 million in its first weekend of release in the United States. Worldwide, the movie made $1.3 billion at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo. The movie was said to have a $100 million budget. The film was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures, with Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, also credited as a producer.
A billion-dollar worldwide gross has become the standard for American-made blockbuster films, particularly those appealing to comic book or video game audiences. The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s gate places it in the top 20 all time (gross revenue) second-best among 2023 movies to Barbie (which made $1.4 billion worldwide).
Critics were divided in their opinion of the animated film’s story, but by ticket sales alone audiences enjoyed its fan-service elements and celebration of video games culture.
Elsewhere in Nintendo’s financial report on Tuesday, the company formally announced that the Nintendo Switch’s successor console will launch sometime in the next fiscal year — meaning before March 31, 2025. Sales of the Nintendo Switch line of consoles, which include the launch model, the Nintendo Switch Lite, and a Nintendo Switch OLED-screen version that launched in 2021, have now topped 141.32 million units, the company said.
