Box office preview: ‘Super Mario Bros.’ take on Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in ‘Air’

After a fantastic March at the box office, April kicks things off with its only holiday weekend, as Easter takes place this Sunday. Good Friday has always been great for going to the movies in the past, and this year should be no different with three new wide releases, two of which will get a head start on Wednesday. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Universal and Illumination Entertainment have a new animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” featuring the voices of Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, Jack Black as Bowzer, and many more. The voice cast might make a small difference for older moviegoers, but mostly, it’s about the long-running Nintendo video games that kicked off in 1981 with the original “Donkey Kong” and quickly branched out into “Mario Bros.” just two years later. Both games were super-popular in arcades but became even more so with the advent of home video game consoles and handheld devices over the course of the next decade. As long as Nintendo has been around releasing games and consoles, Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong and their friends and enemies have been a part of video game culture.

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This isn’t the first attempt to bring the characters to the big screen, and similar to last week’s “Dungeons & Dragons,” there was an ill-fated live action version of “Super Mario Bros.” in 1993, starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi. It ended up making just $20.8 million, which was bad even back then, as it opened in fourth place with just $8.5 million over that Memorial Day weekend.

This “Super Mario Bros.” movie comes after the success of two “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies released in early 2020 and a sequel last year, which opened with $58 and $72 million, respectively, although neither was able to hit $200 million, but with the pandemic being a good excuse in both cases.

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The best thing going for the animated “Super Mario Bros.” is not so much the popularity of the games or its star voice cast, but the fact that there hasn’t been a new high-profile family animated movie in theaters since DreamWorks Animation’s animated sequel “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” which opened moderately before Christmas but then just stuck around with few other choices for family audiences.

Universal deliberately held reviews until Tuesday afternoon, well aware that an animated movie based on popular video game characters will be fairly review-proof when your main target audience is kids and their parents. Either way, reviews so far are mixed at best and not overwhelmingly positive as some other recent movies.

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Those factors alone should allow “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” to open big on Wednesday with $6 to 7 million, but then really explode on Good Friday with it drawing a wide range of boys, girls, parents, and maybe some 20 to 30-something moviegoers who remember the games fondly. It’s likely that the movie could make anywhere in the $20 to 30 million range on Good Friday, which should add up to around $71 to 75 million over the three-day weekend and closer to $90+ million for the movie’s first five days.

Elsewhere, Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Affleck returns with “Air,” a look at Nike’s 1984 campaign to get a fledgling teen basketball player named Michael Jordan to sign an endorsement deal with the sneaker company. Affleck’s long-time collaborator Matt Damon plays Sonny Vacarro, the Nike basketball scout at the center of making this deal happen, while the cast also includes Oscar winner Viola Davis, Emmy winner Jason Bateman, as well as Chris Tucker, Marlon Wayans and Affleck himself as Nike CEO Phil Knight. 

There is such a thing as a “Dad movie,” and “Air” could definitely be seen in that regard, since it will mostly be targeting older males of all ethnicities, since Jordan’s popularity and influence were such pervasive throughout the ‘90s.

“Air” debuted out of the SXSW Film Festival with fantastic reviews, currently holding at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and those reviews and early awards buzz will go along way to driving older business into theaters this weekend as a strong option for those not interested in “Mario Bros.” Then again, Affleck and Damon’s last movie together was Ridley Scott‘s “The Last Duel,” which was released in 2021 while COVID was still raging, and it only made about $30 million in its world-wide release. Fortunately, the true story that inspired “Air” is a lot more recent and relevant to many, although some might also feel (rightly) that this being from Amazon, “Air” will eventually end up on Prime Video, and some might choose to wait until then.

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Regardless, Amazon is releasing “Air” into over 3,300 theaters via its distribution partner, MGM, which should allow it to make $15 to 16 million in its first five days, with $8 to 10 million of that being over the three-day weekend.

Being released wide by IFC Films in an unknown number of theaters – presumably 800 to 1,000 – is Brit McAdams‘ comedy “Paint,” starring Owen Wilson as a public access television painter from Burlington, Vermonth, who finds himself with some serious competition for his popularity. The movie went around the film festival circuit, so there are no reviews at the time of this writing. The trailers and commercials have been out there, and though there doesn’t seem to be much room for this, it should be able to sneak into the top 10 with roughly $2 million over the three-day weekend.

NEON will also be releasing Daniel Goldhaber‘s “How To Blow Up a Pipeline,” which has been on the film festival circuit since last September, in a select number of theaters.

Check back on Monday to see how the various movies do over Easter weekend.

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