Weekend predictions: Mario set to cart off $200 million on opening weekend

April 7, 2023

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is headed for the biggest weekend of 2023, and stands a very good chance to topping $200 million by the end of it. Universal is predicting a whopping $59 million today and $137 million over the weekend to go with the $58 million it has already earned on Wednesday and Thursday. That would add up to $195 million over its first five days in release, and the studio is probably being a little conservative in their projection. The film is so far outside the norm so far that our model has a hard time pinning it down, but here’s what it says so far…

I’ll spare you the details, but before we had any numbers at all on Mario, the model thought a weekend around $52 million would be par for the course, given the type of film it is. Wednesday’s opening day blew that notion out of the water, and Thursday’s number confirmed that we’re headed for an exceptional opening:

There aren’t many films that opened with over $30 million on a Wednesday, so there’s not much to compare Mario with. Note, however, that films usually drop quite steeply from Wednesday to Thursday, sometimes by more than half. Mario didn’t do that at all. Its Thursday number was down just 16% from Wednesday. The model above doesn’t take that into account, instead basing its prediction on the combined total from Wednesday and Thursday.

A slightly more sophisticated linear model that takes the performance of Thursday compared to Wednesday predicts a weekend around $115 million based on the same set of data.

Universal’s early Friday projection of $59 million gives the movie a massive power-up. There are only seven other Wednesday openers that posted comparable numbers… and none of them even topped $40 million on their first Friday:

With so little data to go on I wouldn’t put a huge amount of faith in the top line number here. Mario certainly could do $175 million from Friday to Sunday, but I think that has to be the high-end of expectations. Universal is projecting a Friday-to-weekend multiplier of 2.32, which is in line with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The studio has access to much more detailed data on how many tickets have already been sold on Saturday and Sunday than we do, so perhaps their caution is warranted, but $137 million does seem like a lowball number. Hitting $142 million and topping $200 by the end of the weekend seems quite likely to me.

As for our model, when we have so much uncertainty, my practice is always to take the average of the different predictions. In this case, that gives us a prediction of $135 million for the Friday-to-Sunday weekend. So our model is ultimately being even more cautious than Universal.

Also opening this weekend is the comedy Paint from IFC Films. It looks like it has a shot at making the top 10.

Here’s what that model thinks the top 10 will look like.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie looks certain to have the best opening of the year so far, even when we exclude its great Wednesday and Thursday numbers. Once they are added in, it will already be among the top three movies of 2023 by the end of the weekend. With a good audience response so far, and its family-friendly nature to help it along, it will cruise to the top of the annual chart in a matter of days.

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Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Paint