20 facts you might not know about 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie'

If you weren’t around then, and if you have never seen the movie, it’s hard to articulate just what a fiasco Super Mario Bros. was. In the wake of the flop, Nintendo became reticent to license any of its properties for film adaptation, much less its defining character, Mario.

The first news about a potential Mario movie came about thanks to, well, one of the most famous acts of criminal corporate espionage we can recall. That would be the 2014 Sony hacks. During that time, it became known Sony had been trying to make a Mario movie, even considering Hotel Transylvania director Genndy Tartakovsky to shepherd the project.

You can thank Super Nintendo World for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. If you are not familiar, Super Nintendo World is a land you can find at Universal Studios in Japan and Hollywood. Putting this together led Nintendo and Universal to work together, and along the way, Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, met Chris Meledandri, the founder of Illumination, Universal’s animation wing. They hit it off, and the ball started rolling on Universal being the one to make the Mario movie.

Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are the co-creators of Teen Titans Go!, the irreverent Cartoon Network show set in the DC Universe. In 2018, a feature film based on their show came out. One month later, Horvath and Jelenic met with Universal about the Mario movie, and they were tapped to direct.

Matthew Fogel may not have a Wikipedia page, but he was not unknown to Universal when he was hired to write the screenplay for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. He had just written the screenplay and gotten a "story by" credit on Minions: The Rise of Gru. That was his second credited screenplay. He, um, previously wrote Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son.

Teen Titans Go! is an irreverent, almost anarchic, take on superheroes. Many assumed Horvath and Jelenic would do the same thing with Mario. However, they wanted to make a faithful adaptation that was “more emotional” and “more cinematic” than their show, saying, “Every project we come to, we make new choices depending on who the audience is and what we're going for.”

Yes, there is some “origin story” to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but some borrowed from the early games and Nintendo’s early history for Mario and Luigi. The directors wanted Mario and Luigi to be “blue-collar guys” and hearken back to them being Italian-American plumbers from Brooklyn. They also wanted to create a narrative based on how you beat Mario games by not giving up even when you make mistakes. There is a lot of evidence of the video games in the film in general, replete with Easter eggs.

You may have noticed the "Jumpman" arcade console in the Punch-Out Pizzeria and know both to be Nintendo references. "Jumpman" is what Mario was called in Donkey Kong. However, you may not have recognized Spike, Mario, and Luigi's old boss. He and his company are from the 1985 Nintendo puzzle game "Wrecking Crew."

A couple of Teen Titans Go! veterans provide voices for characters in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Khary Payton, the voice of Cyborg, is the voice of the Penguin King. Meanwhile, Scott Menville, who voices Robin, provides a few small voices. Oh, and the voice of Lumalee, the nihilistic Luma prisoner? That voice belongs to Juliet Jelenic, daughter of Michael Jelenic.

For years, Charles Martinet was the voice of Mario and Luigi. He voiced them across game after game from 1994 through 2023. Mario's over-the-top Italian accent? Yeah, that's Martinet. For the film, instead of Martinet, Universal cast Chris Pratt. This led to much criticism, including from some professional voiceover actors. There was also a lesser controversy about Seth Rogen's voice for Donkey Kong because he just sounds like, you know, Seth Rogen. To that, Rogen said he told the producers, "If you want me to be in this movie, then it's going to sound like me, and that's it. That was the beginning and end of that conversation."

Pratt and Day wanted to do Italian New Yorker voices. However, Pratt’s voice choice was nixed for being too “Tony Soprano.” Day also apparently veered into that area, being told he sounded like a character out of Goodfellas. Evidently, Day was a little less copacetic about the note, saying, “Alright! I think you're wrong, but fine!" (h/t Entertainment Weekly)

While he didn’t get to voice Mario or Luigi, you can hear Martinet in the film. He voices Mario and Luigi’s father, as well as Giuseppe, the guy in the pizzeria who, you know, sounds like Mario from the video games.

You probably know that making a feature-length animated film requires a ton of animators. It’s not like Horvath and Jelenic did this all themselves. They did set the template for what the look and feel of the world would be, though. One of the keys to the directors was realism but in a specific way. They wanted “consistent volume” on the characters, and also wanted limited squash and stretch, two of the primary principles of animation. In short, Horvath said, “We wanted it to feel like a big adventure film and that there are stakes and maybe you believe that these characters can die.”

Look, you hire Jack Black, you’re going to get singing and scatting. It’s what he does. Black voices Bowser, and it isn’t surprising that he came up with the idea for Bowser’s love ballad “Peaches.” Although, several people did end up co-writing the song. The hit song, we should say. “Peaches” ended up peaking at 56 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was released domestically on April 5, 2023. On April 30, the entire film was leaked on Twitter (we won’t call it “X” because that’s a profoundly stupid name, which is saying something given that Twitter isn’t exactly great). The problem? Twitter Blue subscribers bought the ability to upload high-resolution videos of up to an hour in length. It was up for roughly seven hours before being taken down, leading to much consternation about Twitter’s functionality. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think Elon Musk was an abject doofus in way over his head.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie cost $100 million to make, and that is before factoring in marketing that included a Super Bowl ad. Well, by the end of its first week in theaters, it had already become the highest-grossing movie based on a video game ever. It also set records for the highest gross for an animated film in its second and third weeks, so the movie also had a solid tail to it.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie made a hair under $575 million domestically and crossed the billion-dollar threshold worldwide. It ended up at $1.363 billion in terms of worldwide box office, making it a massive hit. For a bit, it seemed like the film would top the 2023 box office. Then, well, Barbie rolled around. In the end, The Super Mario Bros. Movie finished second domestically and worldwide.

While The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a huge hit, it was not a critical darling. It has a 59% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46/100 rating on Metacritic, both middling numbers. Although, for comparison’s sake, 1993’s Super Mario Bros. is at 29% and 35/100 rating, so this was still a major step forward. Though the film got award nominations, a healthy portion of them are for “Peaches” in song categories.

Given modern filmmaking in Hollywood, it's almost a surprise that The Super Mario Bros. Movie doesn't end with an obvious setup for a sequel. Given that Nintendo wouldn't even say they would be open to more film adaptations until they saw how this movie did, maybe they were hedging their bets at Nintendo and Universal. Once The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a proven hit, Nintendo said more Nintendo adaptations are coming, though notably, a definitive sequel to this film has not been announced as of May 2024.

It seems like there is a good chance there will be a spinoff, or two, from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Although, it may be more accurate to say that a few of the actors would be interested in a cash cow that only involves doing voiceover work. Day has said he’d like to do a Luigi movie based on Luigi’s Mansion. Rogen has said he would be up to do a film based on Donkey Kong Country , and Anya Taylor-Joy may even be in talks to do a Princess Peach spinoff. We’d bet on at least one of these happening.