By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 17, 2023 |
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 17, 2023 |
Some people seem surprised by just how much money The Super Mario Bros. Movie has made in two short weeks. Weirdly, a long-awaited family film based on one of the highest-earning IPs of all time wasn’t a slam dunk for many. Well, Universal, Nintendo, and Illumination certainly got the job done. Mario has stayed on top of the box office in its second week of release, with a $87 million follow-up weekend. Its domestic gross is already just under $348 million (for comparison, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, from the same studio, is at $185.5 million after 17 weeks.) With an international gross of $677.9 million, it’s also the highest-grossing movie of 2023 so far. Its Japanese release is set for April 28, so expect that number to go up.
Audiences had a choice of demons or vampires, and they chose The Pope’s Exorcist over Renfield. The former landed at number two with $9.15 million from 3,178 theaters, while Nic Cage’s neck-sucking feast earned $7.7 million from 3,375 theaters. This is a bit of a surprise given that marketing for Renfield was way more prominent, and Cage’s fandom is certainly more fervent than Russell Crowe’s. But in the battle between a horror film and a horror-comedy, keeping it simply won out.
Toni Collette’s comedy Mafia Mamma landed at number seven with $2.044 million from 2,002 locations, not helped by mediocre reviews and a plot that sounded like it should have been in a second-tier Julia Roberts rom-com from 1996.
Did you watch The Exorcist and wish it was way more religious and had a cameo by Glenn Beck? Well, there is a movie for you. Nefarious is a demon-possession film for Christian audiences. Huh. I’m not sure how that appealed to the Kirk Cameron crowds, but it did OK in its opening weekend, debuting at number nine with $1.33 million from 933 cinemas.
Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid has earned mostly strong reviews but there are also more than a few write-ups that deem it to be The Worst Thing Ever. The three-hour nightmare comedy about a middle-aged virgin trying to visit his mother seems like the kind of film a hell of a lot of people will loathe. It’s also A24’s most expensive production ever, so hopes are high. Its premiere did set a record for this year by being the highest-grossing limited opening weekend of 2023 so far. It earned an impressive $320,3966 from four locations. Can it hold onto that momentum once it opens wide or will it be too out-there for general crowds? My guess is the latter but I love chaos so I’m hoping for fun either way.
This coming week sees the release of the newest Guy Ritchie film, The Covenant, the horror film Evil Dead Rise, historical drama Chevalier, and crime thriller To Catch a Killer.
You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.