What Does The Super Mario Galaxy Movie's Box Office Mean For The Future Of The Franchise?

"The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" has continued to dominate theaters worldwide for three weekends. It's now the highest-grossing movie of the year globally, having overtaken the Chinese smash hit "Pegasus 3" (itself the previous biggest box office success of 2026). And while it's not particularly surprising in light of how well its predecessor performed, it's a reminder that Universal Pictures, Nintendo, and Illumination have built an absolute juggernaut out of these video game mainstays.

In its most recent weekend, "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" added another $35 million domestically and $48.2 million internationally, bringing its running total to $747.4 million worldwide. Against a reported $110 million production budget, it's already well beyond profitable. Everything else from here on out is gravy. While it won't match the utterly high highs of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which made $1.3 billion and served as one of the biggest box office hits of 2023, it hardly matters in the end.

/Film's Nina Starner called "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" a "cute, flashy, and mostly empty" sequel in her review, which a lot of critics seemed to agree with. Be that as it may, audiences are still resoundingly on board for what Universal and Illumination have done with Nintendo's most beloved characters. These movies aren't critical darlings, but they are crowd-pleasers. At this point, the franchise is assured to continue. It's just a matter of how much Nintendo wishes to expand from here on out.

Universal has already made more than $2 billion at the box office with the first two "Super Mario" movies against combined budgets totaling $210 million. That's about 10X the investment (not counting marketing) in ticket sales, with a lot of gas left in the tank. Any studio in Hollywood would kill for a cash cow this lucrative.

At this point, it's a matter of when — not if — Universal announces "Super Mario 3." But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We know a bit about the "Donkey Kong" movie that was in development at one point. Whether or not that's still happening remains unclear, but the floodgates are now open for the larger "Super Mario" property to flourish with such spin-offs. This is now primed to become a full-on cinematic universe, one with vast commercial potential.

Nintendo fans shouldn't necessarily expect a "Super Smash Bros. Movie," but more crossovers and spin-offs? That's all but assured. "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" features Yoshi (Donald Glover) and Star Fox (Glen Powell), among other popular Nintendo characters. The building blocks are being put into place for more. Universal clearly intends to build this out so long as Nintendo is on board. The box office returns thus far, despite a lack of critical acclaim, gives them the green light to proceed with those larger plans.

Without getting into spoilers, "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" includes post-credits scenes that hint at the future of this cinematic universe. Recall that Nintendo has more than 40 years' worth of stories and characters to exploit. It's not unlike Marvel in that way. Even if half of the people around the world who are going to see these movies now suddenly stopped caring, they would still be hugely profitable. Rest assured, unless Nintendo wants to pull the plug, this franchise is going to continue on for the foreseeable future. It's essentially a license to print money right now, and nobody in the business of making money is going to cut that short.

"The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" is in theaters now.