Project Hail Mary might have some competition on its hands for the biggest movie of 2026 so far. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie survived some pretty harsh reviews (I dug it well enough) to have the biggest Wednesday debut in April with $34.5M. That’s also the biggest day for any movie so far this year. Sorry, Ryan Gosling, but your acclaimed astronaut flick only managed $33M on its best day.
To put it into context, The Super Mario Bros. Movie opened with $31M on Wednesday this same weekend in 2023. It went on to earn a massive $204M over the five-day Easter holiday weekend. Current estimates are that this one will earn somewhere around $185M, but that’s a conservative number, and if fans turn out, it may surpass its predecessor.
On that score, Mario Galaxy’s biggest competition will be from Project Hail Mary’s third week, and the debut weekend for A24’s The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. I don’t expect the latter to eat into the same audience, because we all know that Yoshi fans are die-hard and they are legion.
