Talk about a Hail Mary pass.
Illumination and Universal’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie enjoyed a stellar second weekend in theaters, soaring past the $300 million mark domestically and $600 million worldwide.
The sequel is the first Hollywood pic of the year to accomplish either milestone after topping the domestic box office chart with $69 million, a decline of just 48 percent, for a North American tally of $308.1 million through Sunday. Overseas, it took in another $84 million from 88 markets for a foreign total of $321.1 million and global cume of $628.8 million.
Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary, now in its fourth outing, also remained a force of nature as it celebrated crossing the $500 million mark in worldwide ticket sales.
In North America, the Ryan Gosling-led space adventures continued to hold in well, falling off 33 percent to $24.5 million for a domestic haul of $256.7 million. It took in another $30.6 million overseas for a foreign cume of $254 million and $510.6 million worldwide.
Between them, the two films have helped propel domestic box office revenue to $2.113 billion year-to-date — the best showing for the first part of the year since before the pandemic in 2019 ($2.619 billion), according to Comscore. And revenue is running 25 percent ahead of the $1,711 billion collected during the same corridor in 2025. (Ironically, revenue for the weekend itself was down 19 percent from last year after five consecutive weekends of growth.)
Other weekend highlights at the box office:
A24’s provocative film The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, held in better than expected, dropping just 21 percent to $8.6 million for an early domestic total of $31 million for A24.
That leaves Universal’s new romancer, You, Me & Tuscany, which opened in fourth place with $8.1 million. Social media has been quick to note it is the first rom-com featuring Black leads since 2012’s Think Like a Man.
Will Packer, the film producer behind You, Me & Tuscany, Think Like a Man, Girls Trip, Ride Along and other titles, tells THR that the challenge for getting such features into theaters stems not only from the industry’s “very paltry record when it comes to films that highlight diverse leads,” but also that rom-coms have been deemed as a genre that can be relegated to Netflix streaming offerings or TV films on Lifetime.
Filmmaker Kat Coiro’s movie stars Halle Bailey as a chef who secretly starts living in a vacant Italian villa and develops feelings for the cousin (Regé-Jean Page) of the residence’s owner. The Hollywood Reporter’s review deemed the film an “appealing” escapist fantasy.
Bolstered by a strong A– CinemaScore and a 93 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the studio anticipates You, Me & Tuscany will hold better than expected.
More to come.
This story was originally published April 11 at 12:30 p.m.