The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is tracking to deliver one of the biggest domestic openings of the year. Universal's 2023 hit arrived in wide release on a Wednesday, opening to a huge $204 million 5-day opening, and legged out to $575 million and $1.35 billion worldwide.
Those numbers place it within the Top 10 animated films of all time and will be hard to replicate on the second go. That being said, internal tracking puts the five-day weekend at $160M–$180M, which is still fantastic, especially if it hits the upper-end. The audience appetite is real: family films with this kind of pre-release energy rarely disappoint on opening weekend. It'll just come down to how much of its audience it can retain.
In second place, Project Hail Mary hopes to continue on its remarkable path. After a -32% second frame ($54.5M) on an $80.5M opening, the question entering week three is how deeply the blockbuster presence of Super Mario Galaxy cuts into its audience. The Sci-Fi flick has crossed over as a four-quad film, so Mario will take some of its thunder away. A -40% to -45% decline would put the third weekend between $30M and $33M, but there's still a chance it holds just as good this weekend at closer to $35–$37 million. Either way, the domestic total will exceed $200M by Sunday night.
The Drama, A24's wide entry opening this Friday, is the counter-programming play of the weekend. Tracking has been building steadily — call it $15M–$25M — which sits squarely within A24's range for prestige fare that's built genuine awards-season buzz. The question is whether the studio can thread the needle between art-house credibility and mainstream audience reach with Mario and Project Hail Mary dominating the oxygen. Whether it just merely matches the very good Challengers ($15M opening on its way to $50M final) or can launch at $20+ will largely depend on final week word of mouth and reviews.
Hoppers (Disney/Pixar) enters its fifth weekend looking to cross the $150M domestic milestone. The -31% hold last weekend was strong for a four-weekend-old animated film; but with Mario hitting as a direct heavy-hitting competition, we could see a slide closer to 50% this weekend to around $6–7M. Even still, a $170M domestic finish scenario is looking increasingly likely, which would represent a meaningful success for an original Pixar release after a string of under-performing originals.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie launched to a massive $130.9 million over the three-day weekend, easily claiming the #1 spot and delivering the biggest opening of 2026. Including Wednesday and Thursday early-release grosses, the five-day total stands at $190.1 million domestically and $372.5 million worldwide. The sequel is already profitable against its $110M production budget before the second weekend even starts.
How does that stack up against its predecessor? This was always going to be about how much of the opening audience Mario could retain, since the original already launched with a bang at a sky-high $146.4 million over its first three days and $204.6 in its five-day opening, meaning Galaxy is only very slightly behind — honestly about as good as you hope for. What matters more is the trajectory from here. The original had great 3.9x legs, legging out to $574.9 million domestic and $1.36 billion worldwide. Galaxy’s audience reception tells a similar story: an A CinemaScore (matching its predecessor), a 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and strong word-of-mouth across the board. Critics weren’t as kind (43% RT, 35 Metacritic), but that barely mattered last time.
The real question is whether it can match the kind of legs the first one had, or if the sequel factor pulls it down to a more typical 3.0x multiplier. Even at the conservative end, a $400M domestic finish is locked in as the floor here. If it plays more like the original, we’re looking at $500M+. The worldwide number at $372.5M is basically on-par with the original too, a great result.
In second place, Project Hail Mary dropped -43% to $30.7 million in its third weekend, pushing its domestic total past $217 million. Considering the mammoth Mario opener, that’s a great hold and suggests it will play deep into the spring. PHM’s worldwide total has now crossed $420 million, and the domestic number continues to track between Dune: Part Two ($282M) and Oppenheimer ($329M) in the leggy-blockbuster conversation. A $300M domestic finish right between those two films looks very achievable.
The weekend’s other new release, The Drama, opened to $14.4 million from 3,087 theaters — a solid result for A24’s counter-programming play. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson drew audiences who had zero interest in animated plumbers, and the $28M worldwide debut against a $25M budget means this one should be comfortably profitable. The audience reception is warm (81% RT audience, 7.3 IMDb) but the B CinemaScore is per-the-course for A24 movies like this one. A24 counter-programs better than almost any studio. We’re tracking this against The Materialists and Challengers, and right now a finish in between those looks likely, unless it can hold particularly well like Challengers did and hit $50M.
Below the top three, the rest of the chart took a significant hit from Galaxy’s arrival. Hoppers fell -52% to $5.8M in its fifth weekend, bringing its total to $149.6M — a solid run for Pixar that should finish around $165M domestic. Reminders of Him dropped -53% to $2.2M ($45.4M total), settling into a respectable run for the book adaptation. They Will Kill You had a rough second weekend at -61%, and at $8.8M total, it’s looking like a disappointment for Universal.