Mario creator thinks he knows why ‘Super Mario Bros.’ failed

The long-awaited ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ is hitting theaters around the United States today, and it certainly looks as though the film will erase memories of the 1993 film about Nintendo’s lovable plumber.

‘Super Mario Bros’ starred Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the lovable duo of Mario and Luigi in their quest to save Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis) from King Koopa (Dennis Hopper).

Although the film obtained the film rights from Nintendo, it was a critical and commercial failure, grossing $38.9 million worldwide against a budget of $42-48 million.

The film took quite a bit of creative license with the Mario brand, and showed some of the comedic elements that influenced other successful films like ‘Ghostbusters’ (1984) and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1990).

Reason why ‘Super Mario Bros.’ flopped

Unfortunately for the film and Nintendo, critics slammed the film for its plot, tone and lack of faithfulness to the source material.

In an interview with Variety, Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the Mario franchise, touched on the 1993 film, stating that there was “a distance” between himself and the creators of the film.

“We were fearful of all the failure of past IP adaptations, where there’s a license and a distance between the original creators and the creators of the films,” said Miyamoto.

“The fans get outraged and mad because the studios didn’t do justice to the original work. We really didn’t want a backlash.”

Illumination founder Chris Meledandri joined Miyamoto in the interview, and noted that the previous film was barely even mentioned as the company prepared for the project.

“If we talked about that earlier Mario film for five minutes in the last eight years, that’s an overstatement,” said Meledandri.

“What we were interested in building was a partnership that stood in stark contrast to what that process was in the early ‘90s. Or in fact, in contrast to any other partnership between a Japanese creator and an American studio.”

The Super Mario Bros. Movie set for strong box office numbers

That strategy by Illumination looks to be a wise one, with ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ projected to perform well at the box office upon its release.

The film is expected to make $125 million in the U.S/Canada and over $100 million abroad from Wednesday to Sunday this week, for a total of $225 million.

Those figures would surpass the current record opening for a video game feature adaptation, Paramount/Sega’s ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2′.

The film earned $72.1 million in the U.S. when it was released on April 8, 2022.