The Super Mario Bros. Movie – we’re going to get so much mileage out of this image (pic: Universal Pictures)



Even on its second week, the Super Mario movie isn’t slowing down and is predicted to make up to $3.5 billion once it releases digitally.



Despite controversies regarding its voice cast and early negative reviews , The Super Mario Bros. Movie has already become a monster hit; the sort of milestone release that could see major changes for both the film and games industry.



After just a couple of days it was breaking records worldwide , including the largest ever opening weekend for an animated movie, overthrowing Disney’s Frozen 2 .



You’d think things would start to slow down after its second week but, no, it’s on the cusp of making $700 million worldwide (just over £564 million), making it the highest grossing video game movie of all time (taking the crown from 2016’s Warcraft). And it’s suggested it could earn upwards of $1 billion (about £806 million) by the time it’s done in cinemas.



This comes courtesy of MST Financial senior analyst David Gibson, who estimates that the movie will make $1.2 billion total at the box office, followed by an additional $2.3 billion from its digital release. Altogether, that’s $3.5 billion (about £2.8 billion).



At the time of writing, no exact dates have been given for when the movie will be available for streaming or via DVD/Blu-ray and no doubt the original roadmap has changed given how successful the film has been.



Obviously, all that money won’t go to Nintendo – Illumination and Universal will be taking a cut – but Gibson tells Axios that Nintendo will come out of the venture with around $1.1 billion (about £886 million).



He does add that this isn’t a ‘Pokémon Go moment’ for the company, since a mobile game can continuously generate money as opposed to a one-off movie.



However, aside from assuring a sequel (which a post credits scene already teases ) and the possibility of other studios approaching Nintendo with movie pitches, that money can also be fed back into the gaming side of the company’s business.



Illumination should make a WarioWare movie all about Wario making a Mario movie rip-off (pic: Nintendo)



These profits could encourage Nintendo to try a few more risks; maybe greenlight projects that it might have been a bit hesitant to do so before.



There’s also the possibility of Nintendo being more willing to throw some money around to buy studios. It’s dabbled in acquisitions before , but they’ve been few and far between, often being for smaller studios that already work as second party developers, like Luigi’s Mansion developer Next Level Games .



That said, it probably won’t start aping Microsoft and Sony with multi-billion purchases. Nintendo has something of a discerning eye, as president Shuntaro Furukawa suggested last year .



‘Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees and having a large number of people who don’t possess Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company,’ he said.



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At the very least, the timing of the movie’s success couldn’t be better as Nintendo’s supposedly on the cusp of launching its next console – the long-rumoured Nintendo Switch 2.



The company hasn’t acknowledged it yet (even promising to keep supporting the current Switch into 2024 ), but the Switch is six years old now and prominent rumours point to a potential reveal/launch for a successor in either 2023 or 2024 .



However much money the Mario movie does wind up making, and whatever Nintendo’s plans are, the movie’s incredible profits are going to have a significant effect on the company’s business, both from an investment and a game production standpoint.









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