This past weekend, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (The Super Mario Bros. Movie) produced by Universal Pictures was released in 4,343 theaters in North America and won a box office of 146 million US dollars. In order to coincide with the Easter holiday, the film was released last Wednesday, and the box office reached a total of 204 million U.S. dollars in the five days of last Sunday. The production cost of the entire film was only 100 million U.S. dollars.

At the same time, "Super Mario Bros. The Movie" also set a number of historical records, including the global opening box office of an animated film in film history (US$377 million surpassing the previous US$358 million of "Frozen 2"), and the best video game adaptation film in North America. The opening box office (greatly surpassing the $72.1 million opening box office of the previous record holder "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" last year) has given the American film market a big boost.

"Super Mario Bros. The Movie" Stills

What's even more remarkable is that, compared to various superhero movies or "Avatar" and other visual spectacle works, "Super Mario Bros. Movie" has less relationship between IMAX and 3D specifications and mainly ordinary 2D projections. The ticket price is not high, and it is not because of the high ticket price that it can achieve such a good result, but because it sells more tickets—a total of more than 20 million tickets were sold.

Moreover, according to the survey and statistics of Universal Pictures, only 16% of the movie tickets sold in North America in the past five days were half-price children's tickets, which is enough to show that "Super Mario Bros. Movie" attracted not only small audiences, Not only has it won the family group, ordinary young people and middle-aged and elderly audiences are also willing to pay for the latest adaptation of this forty-year-old game out of feelings.

Outside of North America, "Super Mario Bros. The Movie" grossed $173 million in its first week overseas. In mainland China, although the film was scheduled to premiere during the Ching Ming Festival holiday in the middle of the week, it collided with the Japanese animation film "Journey to Bell Bud" and the family carnival film "Hachiko", and the box office in the first week was close to 80 million yuan. It can be said that the performance is general. However, "Douban" users, who have always been picky, gave the film a high score of 8.1, and the follow-up box office may continue to climb driven by word of mouth.

On the other hand, since the storyline of "Super Mario Bros. The Movie" itself is relatively simple, it is not difficult to imagine that the reputation of film critics and audiences is also showing a trend of differentiation. At present, its freshness on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes" is only 56%, which is not up to the pass line, but the audience gave it an A-level post-screening score.

'Super Mario Bros. The Movie' Polarizes Critics and Audience Scores on Rotten Tomatoes

With the commercial success of "Super Mario Bros. The Movie", it can be said that Universal Pictures has completely replaced the status of animation film king held by Disney for a long time in the past decades. For various reasons, Disney's animation works in recent years have always been difficult to win enthusiastic responses from the audience. Last year's "Light Years" and "Odd World" both struggled at the box office, but Universal Pictures has relied on "Minions" and series such as "The Voice 2," "League of Bad Guys," and "Puss in Boots 2." , has repeatedly won excellent box office worldwide.

In contrast, the experience of another new film released at the same time is completely different from that of "Super Mario Bros. Movie". "Air" from MGM Pictures, a subsidiary of Amazon, has a freshness rate of 92% on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes". The box office of the painting was only 20.2 million US dollars, and the box office of the three-day weekend was 14.5 million US dollars, which happened to be only one-tenth of the "Super Mario Bros. Movie".

"Legend of Air Cushion" won praise from most film critics and audiences

"Legend of Air Cushion" is directed by Ben Affleck, starring his good buddy Matt Damon. The film tells the inspirational story of the sports product giant Nike's insight and talent, and Michael Jordan, who later became an NBA legend, to develop air-cushioned sneakers. Of course, for such a work aimed at middle-aged and elderly audiences - 40% of the audience are over 45 years old in the first weekend - the current box office results are already considered good; coupled with the excellent Word of mouth, I believe there will be opportunities for further growth in the box office in the future.

However, the production cost of "Legend of Air Cushion" has reached 90 million U.S. dollars, and Amazon's expenses for publicity and distribution are said to be as high as 130 million U.S. dollars. In addition, it is a restricted level, and the pressure to pay back is quite high. Of course, for Amazon, which is rich and powerful, even if the cost of the film cannot be recovered offline, it may not be considered a serious crisis. On the one hand, "Legend of Air Cushion" will continue to receive on-demand fees on Amazon's online on-demand platform in the future; Sincerity, even during awards season.

"Legend of Air Cushion" poster

Last month, Apple, which is also a newcomer to Hollywood, also announced that it will invest one billion US dollars in the future to produce films exclusively for big-screen screenings, which has encouraged the American theater industry, which is looking forward to an early return to normalcy. For Hollywood, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix are not film companies in the traditional sense. The film and television works of the three originally focused on distribution on their respective streaming media platforms. However, with Amazon's acquisition of MGM and Apple now announcing that it will increase investment in the theater model, it seems that Netflix is the only one that still insists on a purely online model, and Apple and Amazon's switch to the traditional distribution model is also the same. It made many people feel a little strange. Why did the two companies move to theaters because their existing streaming media platforms were not well developed?

To put it simply, the reason for this is the pressure from Hollywood filmmakers on the one hand. Almost all famous directors and actors hope that their works can appear on the big screen, not just on TVs, computers or even mobile phone screens. On the other hand, showing it in theaters can greatly increase the awareness of the film, and it actually has a positive promotional effect on the on-demand benefits of the work after it is released on the Internet platform in the future. This point seems to have basically reached a consensus in Hollywood.

That is to say, the game between streaming media and traditional theater chains, which was once a tense and life-and-death game, came and went quickly. The development model of walking on two legs and complementing each other seems to have become the current mainstream, so only streaming media pioneer Netflix is still insisting on walking on the road of progress with one leg.