The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Crosses $1 Billion Worldwide

It took ten weekends, but Mario has done it again. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has officially crossed $1 billion at the global box office, becoming the first film of 2026 to reach that milestone. Universal and Illumination's follow-up to The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been a slower burn than its record-shattering predecessor, inching toward the target week after week rather than blowing past it on opening weekend, but the destination is the same, and it cements the plumber as one of the most bankable faces in modern animation.

Released back in April, the sequel never matched the explosive ticket sales of the 2023 original, yet it refused to fade. As reported by Deadline, the film finally tipped over the line during its tenth weekend in theaters, a far longer road than the original, which cleared the same bar in a fraction of the time. For a year that has otherwise lacked a clear box-office juggernaut, a Mario movie crossing ten figures first feels almost inevitable in hindsight: Nintendo's mascot remains a draw that transcends the usual video-game-movie skepticism, and strong word of mouth among families kept seats filling long after the opening rush faded.

Breaking down the numbers

In the United States, the film has earned a total of $428.5 million, making it the highest-grossing domestic release of 2026 so far. Its rest-of-the-world tally now sits at $571.5 million, which also makes it the highest-grossing US movie overseas this year. Put those together and, according to Box Office Mojo, the worldwide gross lands at a precise $1,000,028,930, just barely over the line, but over it all the same.

That figure is enough to make The Super Mario Galaxy Movie the second highest-grossing video game movie of all time. The only title ahead of it is, fittingly, the one that started this run: The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which closed its theatrical life with a global haul of $1.36 billion. Two films into this cinematic universe, Mario isn't just competing in the video-game-adaptation space. He owns the top of it.

Passing Madagascar in record time

The bigger story might be what this does for the franchise as a whole. With the sequel's continued climb, the two Mario movies combined now sit at roughly $2.3 billion, which is enough to make Super Mario the ninth highest-grossing animated franchise of all time, overtaking DreamWorks' long-running Madagascar series in the process. What makes that leap remarkable is the pace: Super Mario reached the mark in just two films, while it took Madagascar seven movies to accumulate its $2.26 billion.

By that measure, Super Mario is in rarefied company. Among franchises that have crossed the $2 billion threshold on the strength of only their first two films, just three have done better: Inside Out at $2.56 billion, Frozen at $2.73 billion, and Zootopia at $2.89 billion. That is the tier Mario is now knocking on the door of, and it has a deep bench of games left to adapt.

Why the climb was slow

The gradual climb had a clear cause: the sequel divided its audience. A tight 90-minute runtime left the pacing feeling rushed, the film drew surprisingly little from the Galaxy games it is named after (visiting only a couple of their many planets), and the heavier focus on Bowser's redemption arc and the Mario-and-Peach relationship split viewers hard. Producers including Shigeru Miyamoto had flagged ahead of release that this was never meant as a strict 1:1 adaptation of Galaxy, which softened the blow for some and confirmed the bait-and-switch for others. None of it slowed ticket sales.

Two films deep, Super Mario already sits among the biggest franchises in animation history, with a deep roster of games still waiting to be adapted. Sources: NBCUniversal's milestone announcement and Box Office Mojo.