The Super Mario Bros. Movie will be released digitally this week in the US
Fans can buy or rent the film starting on May 16
The Super Mario Bros. Movie will be available digitally from Tuesday, May 16 in the United States.
The film will be available exclusively on digital platforms where customers can buy or rent movies from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. It will cost $29.99 to purchase it.
Dates for the movie’s video on demand release outside of the US have yet to be announced.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is a co-production between Illumination (Minions, Despicable Me) and Nintendo, has generated over $1.2 billion globally since its release in early April.
It’s the biggest film of 2023 so far, ahead of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which have both grossed just shy of $476 million to date, according to Box Office Mojo. It’s also just the 10th animated movie to reach the $1 billion milestone.
Speaking during Nintendo’s quarterly earnings call last week, president Shuntaro Furukawa said the movie was having a positive impact on the company’s core games business.
“In terms of the impact on our business, in the short term, the revenues from the box office and secondary uses of the movie will be reported as sales in the current fiscal year (ending March 2024),” he said.
“But what is more important is that the movie inspires interest in Mario games and has a positive effect on sales of Nintendo Switch hardware and software over the medium to long term. In fact, we are already seeing a variety of positive effects.
“For example, sales are growing for Mario related merchandise, and there is a slight rise in activity for classic Mario titles that can be played through Nintendo Switch Online.
“In the long term, we think this will become a powerful touch point, turning people who have never really played games before into fans of Mario and Nintendo, and renewing the interest of people who used to play (on a Nintendo game platform) but are taking a break.”
Further reading
Disney CEO says Mario movie’s success ‘gives us reason to be optimistic about the business’
Furukawa added: “As for the future, we plan to pour our efforts into a variety of visual content, as we did last year with the consolidation of Nintendo Pictures Co., Ltd. as a subsidiary. We are very happy that this movie is a hit, but will remain focused on carefully developing and further expanding each IP while respecting its unique characteristics, just as we have done in the past.
“Through our strategy of expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP, we want to bring people in contact with our characters and the worlds depicted in our games, with the goal of continually invigorating our core dedicated video game platform business.”
