The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is soaring into the stratosphere.

Illumination’s new box office hit is the sequel to 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was an animated adaptation of the iconic Nintendo video game franchise. The star-studded Super Mario Galaxy Movie cast includes returning voice actors Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy, Keegan-Michael Key, and Jack Black alongside franchise newcomers Brie Larson, Donald Glover, Benny Safdie, and Glen Powell. While the movie couldn’t quite compare with the original’s $146.4 million domestic debut, its stellar $131.7 million marked the best opening weekend of the year so far.

Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is projected to end its sophomore weekend by hitting a cumulative worldwide box office total of $629 million, comprising $308 million from domestic theaters (cementing its status as the No. 1 domestic movie of 2026 so far) and an additional $321 million from international markets. This makes it the first Hollywood movie of the year to hit the $600 million milestone, and only the 207th movie from any region to ever do so in cinema history.

Additionally, this milestone puts 2026’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie on track to quickly surpass the live-action Chinese racing comedy Pegasus 3 to officially become the highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide before long. Pegasus 3 debuted on February 17, quickly becoming a major outlier in the global movie marketplace, grossing $641 million during a time when no English-language features had even cracked the $250 million milestone.

The fact that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is set to hit this major milestone after just 12 days in theaters shows that it is very likely on a trajectory to become a billion-dollar hit just like its predecessor, which ultimately grossed $1.36 billion worldwide. If it does pass that milestone, it will become the 16th animated movie to ever gross more than $1 billion and the fifth non-Disney animated movie to do so, after Super Mario Bros., Ne Zha 2 ($2.216 billion), Minions ($1.159 billion), and Despicable Me 3 ($1.035 billion).

The movie has already surged past its estimated theatrical break-even point. Because theaters keep half of ticket sales and publicity costs are not factored into budgets, blockbuster movies typically need to earn back two and a half times their production budgets in order to end up in the black. While Super Mario Galaxy was costly, its reported budget of $110 million means it most likely only needed to earn $275 million in order to break even, which is a benchmark that it has already hit in North America alone.

Even though The Super Mario Galaxy Movie reviews were largely negative, earning it a disappointing 43% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it a far superior score of 89% from audiences, making it Verified Hot on the platform’s Popcornmeter. This indicates that the movie should continue to climb up the global box office chart thanks to strong word of mouth, even as it trails consistently behind the original 2023 movie in terms of commercial performance. Given the new movie’s current trajectory and recent record, it seems highly probable that another Mario sequel will be officially greenlit before long.

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