The Super Mario Bros. Movie makes $368 million global debut, sets record

Calling it "a box office Koopa d`etat", `Variety` reports that the `The Super Mario Bros. Movie` continues to super smash its opening projections, drawing $55 million from 4,343 theatres in North America on Friday.

Released on Wednesday (U.S. Time), the film has already earned $137 million in domestic ticket sales. "If every dollar were a coin, that would amount to 1.37 million 1-Up mushrooms. That`s a lot of extra lives," `Variety` noted.

The Universal and Illumination film is still on track for a $195-million opening in North America over the five-day Easter weekend frame. That`s way ahead of the $150 million projections that were being reported at the start of the week.

Even more impressively, `Super Mario Bros.` now looks to leap to a $368-million global debut. That would be the biggest-ever opening for an animated film, though, to set the record straight, the current record holder -- 2019`s `Frozen II` -- earned $358 million over a traditional three-day window.

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`The Super Mario Bros. Movie` features a voice cast that includes Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach and Jack Black as Bowser. Unlike, however, the hit Nintendo video game series that it`s based on, the film hasn`t earned glowing reviews, drawing a 44 per cent rating from top critics on aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, notes `Variety`.

The animated adventure, though, has landed well with super fans of the video games as well as family audiences, who, says `Variety`, have been starved of a wide release targeted at them since the debut of `Puss in Boots: The Last Wish` over the holidays, more than three months ago.