THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE opening | AIR opening | Family moviegoing update | April 7 to 9, 2023 Easter weekend

Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary

The current weekend: April 7 to 9, 2023 Easter Weekend

1) The Super Mario Bros. Movie opening

Super Mario Bros. 2023

- This is an important release, and the numbers are sensational.  The 3-day opening ranks #1 all-time among animation series launches.  There have been bigger domestic animation and family weekends, but they were sequels to well-liked first episodes.  Among first episode animation, Super Mario is #1, followed by Secret Life of Pets ($104.4m in July 2016).  This is fantastic:

• Business is being driven by the film's broad demographic appeal.  This is a "five-quadrant" audience — families, plus younger and older males and females.  It’s a marketer's dream.

- Like other genres, family moviegoing has been roiled by the pandemic.  There have been excellent highs (Minions 2, $939.4m worldwide, Puss in Boots 2 $479.4m, Sing 2 $408.4m, Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 $319.7m and $405.4m), but with long gaps between big films.

- Last weekend we noted that 1st quarter domestic BO finished -32.6% below pre-pandemic levels.  There were no new family movies during that time.  If family movies had contributed $150m during the 1st quarter, the BO deficit would be down around -25%, with strong movies ahead.  Between 2017 and 2019, February had How to Train Your Dragon, Peter Rabbit, and LEGO Batman. Not this year (more below).

2) Air opening

Air

- This is an excellent opening for a sports drama.  In general, sports dramas are not big movies — they open to a relatively modest $5.4m, and foreign is not strong — but this is an elite cast, reviews & audience scores are outstanding, and the Nike brand is familiar throughout the world.  The 3-day figure is nearly triple the genre’s average. This is big screen entertainment:

- Air is an example of theatrical distribution's unique strength, and not just at the box office.  This movie is going to have greater impact and sell more subscriptions when it arrives on streaming than it would have done playing exclusively on its own streaming platform.  This release strategy is going to generate superior value at every stage.

3) Family moviegoing update

- Below is an updated family moviegoing chart.  You can see where the genre stumbled during the pandemic.  That followed a remarkable year in 2019: 24 releases, $8.9 billion in worldwide ticket sales, and an incredible 32.4% of Hollywood's worldwide box office.  Check out the lineup.  We're not going to see that kind of success in one year for a long time, if ever.

Pixar’s Elemental, June 16

- 2023 is a pivotal year for family movies.  The release count is not high (12 titles at this time), but the productions are strong.  Disney and Pixar have been running cold (Onward, Raya and the Dragon, Cruella, Ron's Gone Wrong, Encanto, Lightyear, and Strange World; Soul made $121m overseas, but was not released domestically).  Disney and Pixar built the modern family blockbuster. Their Little Mermaid, Elemental and Wish films are important entries this year: