Super Mario Galaxy movie beats expectations with $370 million in opening week

The Super Mario Galaxy movie has beaten opening ticket sales estimates by tens of millions of dollars, signaling yet another big hit for Nintendo and Illumination.

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Super Mario Galaxy proves lightning can strike in the same place twice, as Nintendo has captured another marquee busting release with its new film adaptation. New reports indicate that the Super Mario Galaxy film has made $372 million in combined opening ticket sales so far, overshooting the original $350 million estimate.

The phrasing of this data is a bit confusing; initial box office numbers are reported in "opening week" periods, which typically includes two timelines: 3-day opening weekend sales, and 5-day week ticket sales. The new $372 million figure refers to Super Mario Galaxy's 5-day ticket sales in North America combined with the global 3-day opening weekend ticket sales.

The secret of Mario's movie success lies with Nintendo's strict control over its franchises, and how the firm has preserved its creative teams over multiple decades. The Mario franchise celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and many of the franchise's original creators and developers are still with Nintendo, including series creator Shigeru Miyamoto.

Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri recently said that it was this close collaboration with Nintendo that fostered two mega blockbuster film adaptations.

While Nintendo and Illumination spend big to ensure the Mario films live up to the high universal esteem and acclaim of the franchise, the rest of the video games industry is more tentatively eyeing transmedia adaptations. The exception would be Bethesda/Microsoft, who had closely coordinated with Kilter Films on the Fallout show, and the results speak for themselves: The Fallout TV show's season 2 was watched by 83 million people across Amazon Prime, and the first season greatly catalyzed Fallout game sales on all platforms.

Other firms are taking smaller approaches to adaptations, likely due to both creative and financial restrictions. Nintendo enjoys some domestic advantages over its competitors by virtue of Japan's employment structure, giving Nintendo more potential to preserve continuity of its teams over great spans of time.

This has proven to be a high advantage for any company that's trying to make their own video game adaptation, because these shows and media are passive entertainment, therefore requiring more story-driven investment that pulls farther from the source material. If that source material is not matured, curated, or maintained, it will theoretically be harder to adapt into passive entertainment.