INGLEWOOD, CA – MARCH 12: Images of Mario (L) and Luigi from the Mario Bros. video game franchise appear on a video screen onstage during Nickelodeon’s 2016 Kids’ Choice Awards at The Forum on March 12, 2016 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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Nintendo Direct just announced last night that, yes, Illumination and Universal are delivering a Super Mario Bros movie. It’ll be hitting theaters on December 21, 2022, just days after either James Wan’s Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom or James Cameron’s Avatar 2. Both are set for December 16, but I must presume one of them will move. Chris Pratt stars as Mario alongside Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach) Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser), Keegan-Michael Key (Toad), Seth Rogen (Donkey Kong), Fred Armisen (Cranky Kong), Kevin Michael Richardson (Kamek) and Sebastian Maniscalco (Spike). We’ve been hearing about a possible Illumination-produced Super Mario Bros. movie since early 2017. But the landscape of the video game-based movie has progressed quite a bit since then, to the point where the “curse of the video game movie” is no longer in play.
2016 was supposed to be the year the video game-based movie came of age. Hopes were high that two ambitious animated films and two even more ambitious live-action flicks would solidify the notion that video game-based movies could be profitable and commercially viable. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Ratchet and Clank died on the vine with $13.3 million on a $20 million budget), while The Angry Birds Movie was a hit ($103 million domestic and $352 million worldwide on a $72 million budget) even as reviews and reception were poor. Blizzard and Legendary’s $165 million Warcraft, courtesy of Duncan Jones, was seen as the next great hope for a new “new to cinemas” franchise. It was felled by poor reviews, including a deeply challenging-for-newbies plot that spent the entire running time as a prequel for the “real story.”
It opened huge in China ($90 million Wed/Thurs and $156 million Wed-Sun) but crashed hard with just $219 million. And since it bombed everywhere else (including just $47 million domestic), a $438 million gross, the biggest ever for a video game movie, wasn’t enough to launch a franchise. Ironically, Angry Birds was the second-biggest video game-based movie, but it was so… unloved that a vastly superior sequel (The Angry Birds Movie 2) earned rave reviews (for itself and the “Hair Love” short which preceded it) but just $147 million worldwide in summer 2019. Michael Fassbender’s Assassins Creed positioned itself as an upscale Batman Begins-style action drama. Alas, it earned poor reviews and indifferent reception in late 2016. It grossed just $54 million domestic. It would earn $241 million worldwide, but that wasn’t enough on a $125 million budget.
However, that kind of domestic/overseas split (see also: Need For Speed earning $204 million worldwide from just $66 million domestic) somewhat explains why Hollywood keeps trying with video game-based movies. The great video game movie awakening didn’t happen. To add insult to injury Resident Evil: The Final Chapter brought the only successful video game franchise to a close with poor reviews, indifferent global box office (including just $26 million domestic) but a whopping $159 million in China. That was a good enough $312 million global cume on a mere $40 million budget, pushing the six-film franchise to $1.229 billion worldwide on a combined $293 million budget. That explains why Sony released Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter in theaters amid a mostly recovered Chinese marketplace in December 2020. But from early 2018 to early 2020, well, something unexpected happened.
The video game movie started righting itself. MGM and Warner Bros.’ Tomb Raider got steamrolled by Black Panther in North America ($56 million) but held its own overseas. The mostly enjoyable (if hamstrung by origin story tropes) Alicia Vikander vehicle earned $94 million in China and $274 million worldwide on a $95 million budget, essentially tying the $275 million cume (sans inflation) of Angelina Jolie’s 2001 Tomb Raider. New Line and Warner Bros.’ Rampage is still possibly the best video game movie ever made, with Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris and Jeffrey Dean Morgan headlining a cheerfully violent monster mash that delivered an incredible amount of “big monsters attacking the big city and each other” content for on a $120 million budget. The Brad Peyton film earned $103 million domestic, $155 million in China and $428 million worldwide.
Warner Bros. and Legendary’s Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was a well-reviewed and well-liked hit, earning $146 million domestic (a record for video game movies at the time) and $430 million worldwide on a $150 million budget. That may not have been the start of a new franchise (it “only” earned $93 million in China while dealing with overperformances of Aladdin and Avengers: Endgame worldwide), but it was another example of a good video game flick. Ditto Angry Birds Movie 2, which stumbled commercially but got better reviews than any video game flick before or since. Finally, in February 2020, just before Covid upended the world, Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog blew past expectations and online mockery (partially thanks to a delay from November 2019 to early 2020 to “fix” the protagonist’s animation to make him more faithful to the game) to make history.
The Jim Carrey/James Marsden flick earned $70 million over a Fri-Mon President’s Day weekend launch and legged out to $148 million domestic and $306 million worldwide on an $82 million budget. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, for which Idris Elba will voice Knuckles, is set to open on April 8, 2022, and may well be Paramount’s first successful “new” franchise in a generation. That was five straight big-scale video game movies that were surprisingly good and/or surprisingly successful. Lionsgate’s Eli Roth-directed Borderlands is being treated as a star-driven event featuring the likes of Kevin Hart, Cate Blanchett, Jack Black and Jamie Lee Curtis. Meanwhile, the “video game movie not based on a video game” sub-genre continues to chug along with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, John Wick and Free Guy winning artistic and commercial success.
That’s not to say these movies are glorious classics, even if I really (Rampage), really (Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life) like a few of them. In a world where comic book superhero movies have become so culturally dominant that the fandoms and critics tear each other apart over whether, say, Thor: Ragnarok or Black Panther should be placed on the same pedestal as The Godfather or Do the Right Thing, I’d have no objection to video game movies remaining unapologetic B-movie actioners. That’s one reason the discourse around Godzilla Vs. Kong was so wholesome and pleasant last March. Even when the films are exceptional (Shin Godzilla), nobody gets offended by leaving the very good Kong: Skull Island out of the (non-tech) awards seasons conversation. Sometimes an A-level B-movie can still be a good B-movie.
There was a feeling in early 2017 that Super Mario Bros. could play the ironic savior of the video game movie, an unmitigated blockbuster arriving almost 30 years after the 1993 Super Mario Bros. live-action debacle set the genre on a multi-decade-long (Street Fighter, Prince of Persia, Hitman, Max Payne, etc.) string of failure. But Sonic, Rampage and Detective Pikachu changed that narrative. Covid-curve variables aside, Mario (a title that suggests Joker or Cruella, but I digress) could gross slightly more than The Secret Life of Pets 2 ($160 million domestic/$430 million worldwide) and become the biggest video game movie ever. The difference, with the caveat that I’m guessing the film will cost around $85 million (Illumination movies are not Pixar-level expensive),that Illumination’s Mario may merely now confirm that the curse of the video game movie has ended.
