After the downturn of the pandemic, blockbuster cinema has bounced back in a significant way in 2023.
As reported by Variety, the dual release of Barbie and Oppenheimer led to a sizeable uptick in UK box office numbers in July. Earlier this year, meanwhile, The Super Mario Bros. Movie had the most successful global opening ever for an animated film.
At the time of writing (August 7), the video game adaptation is still the highest-grossing movie of the year, earning over $1.3billion at the global box office (via BoxOfficeMojo). This is followed by Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which crossed the $1billion mark in August.
James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 is in third place, earning over $823million globally.
You can check out the full top 10 highest-grossing movies of the year below.
1. The Super Mario Bros. Movie – $1,351,478,338
2. Barbie – $1,031,481,000
3. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 – $845,303,497
4. Fast X – $704,709,660
5. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse – $683,100,143
6. The Little Mermaid – $564,244,557
7. Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania – $476,071,180
8. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One – $452,650,787
9. Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts – $429,885,021
10. John Wick: Chapter 4 – $426,978,565
Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a collaboration between Nintendo, Universal Pictures and Illumination. It’s the second adaptation of Mario on the big screen, following the 1993 live-action film Super Mario Bros. starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo.
Chris Pratt voices the lead plumber in the film, alongside Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong.
In a two-star review, NME wrote: “It’s faithful enough to tempt existing fans to the cinema, but too perfunctory to be pored over. Is the Mario movie super? To paraphrase one of the title character’s catchphrases, it’s-a mediocre.”