‘Super Mario Bros.’ surpasses $600 million to top the 2023 box office

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” scored the best second weekend ever for an animated movie in North American theaters with $87 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. The family-friendly Universal release dropped a slim 41% from its record-making opening weekend.

With $94 million from international showings, “Mario’s” global total now stands at a staggering $678 million, surpassing “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” to become biggest film of 2023 in just two weekends.

“Mario” faced little major competition this weekend even with a slew of new national releases including “Renfield,” “The Pope’s Exorcist,” “Mafia Mamma” and the animated “Suzume.” It still has two weekends before “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” flies into theaters to jump-start the summer moviegoing season.

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Sony and Screen Gem’s R-rated “The Pope’s Exorcist” starring Russell Crowe as the late Father Gabriele Amorth — the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome from 1986 to his death at 91 in 2016 — fared the best. It made an estimated $9.2 million from 3,178 locations.

Third place went to “John Wick: Chapter 4” in its fourth weekend with $7.9 million. The Lionsgate action pic has now made over $160.1 million domestically.

Universal’s “Renfield,” the supernatural thriller starring Nicolas Cage as Dracula and Nicholas Hoult as the title character, opened in fourth place with $7.8 million.

Ben Affleck’s Air Jordan origin story “Air” rounded out the top five, with $7.7 million in its second weekend to bring its total domestic earnings to $33.3 million.

Makoto Shinkai’s PG-rated anime “Suzume,” released domestically by Sony with both dubbed and subtitled versions available, opened in 2,170 theaters and grossed an estimated $5 million in ticket sales.

A24 also debuted its new Ari Aster mind-bender “Beau is Afraid,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, where it made $320,396 over the weekend, boasting many sold-out showings. The three-hour odyssey from the director of horror favorites “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” expands nationwide on Friday.