Mark Schilling Japan Correspondent After opening on April 28 in Japan, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has hit the JPY10 billion ($71 million) milestone in just 31 days – the quickest ever by a non-Japanese animation in the Japanese market.In the latest three-day period from May 28 to 28, the film earned JPY632 million ($4.5 million), bringing its cumulative box office to JPY10.1 billion ($71.7 million), according to figures supplied by distributor Toho-Towa.
Based on an iconic Japanese game series, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” currently ranks third all-time at the worldwide box office for animated films, behind “Frozen” and Frozen II.” Toho-Towa has not issued a final earnings forecast for the film.
And the title still has a way to go to catch Japan’s all-time box office leader, the locally-produced “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train.” That earned JPY40.4 billion ($288 million) in 2020.
Virtually absent from Japanese screens at the height of the pandemic and slow to return as the disease waned, Hollywood films grabbed a nearly 30% market share last year and are on the upswing this year, as the success of “Mario” underlines.
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