Box Office Report: Jack Black >>> Chris Pratt

Talk of the ‘video game movie curse’ has been commonplace in cinema for decades now, to the point where it’s one of the biggest cliches in the industry. It’s not even true now, given that we have a few video game adaptations with solid reviews and the box office to match. Now, we have the long-awaited Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Illumination animated frenzy that is in no way connected to the Bob Hoskins dystopian nightmare.

Here’s a big family film based on one of the biggest pop culture brands of all-time, so of course it did well over the Easter weekend. It grossed over $146.3 million in 4,343 theaters. That’s a per-venue average of $33,700. Nothing too shabby. There’s been a lot of talk lately over whether there are enough proper family films in cinemas that are appealing to younger kids. There’s clearly a gap in the market that theatrical releases just aren’t filling right now so you can see how Mario made bank. I think we can give Jack Black more credit for this than Worst Chris.

Debuting at number four is Air, Ben Affleck’s biographical drama about the rise of Nike and the Air Jordan. Reviews for this were pretty sturdy and this release worked well as counter-programming for adults. It grossed $14.46 million from 3,507 theaters. It was a smart move for Amazon Studios to give this a theatrical release. They had initially planned for a streaming-exclusive rollout until the test screenings suggested it could survive outside of that.

The weekend wasn’t so great for Paint, Owen Wilson’s, uh, comedy (?) that pastiches Bob Ross. Reviews were bad and it didn’t seem like many people cared about something that felt like a Funny or Die gag from 2013. It grossed $750,000 from 819 cinemas.

The excellent thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline is one of my favourite films of 2023 so far, and strong reviews pushed it to a solid limited opening of $120,479 from 12 theaters. Kelly Reichardt, one of the queens of indie minimalism, has a new film this weekend in the form of Showing Up. Her works inspire intense devotion from a tiny portion of film lovers and not much in terms of commercial gross. But she’s a legend and it’s great to see her films get love from A24. It earned $66,932 this past weekend. The Pakistani film Joyland, about a young man who falls for a trans dancer, brought in $21,142 from one cinema.

This coming week sees the release of the trashbag Beautiful Disaster, the horror iflm The Pope’s Exorcist, the Dracula comedy Renfield, and the mob comedy Mafia Mamma.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.