It’s a boost for the company’s shares, which have slumped since its COVID-era heights. Nintendo shares are down about 17.7% from their most recent peak in March 2022.

The Mario movie, distributed by Universal Pictures, made $376 million at the global box office since opening last week, the studio said on Monday. That makes it the largest movie opening of 2023 thus far—overtaking Disney’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania—as well as the largest opening for a movie based on a video game and the largest debut of an animated movie. 

“The box office just kept growing and growing,” Jim Orr, Universal’s president for distribution, told Variety, calling it a “tremendous worldwide debut.”

COVID rise and fall

Sales of Nintendo’s hardware and software surged during the COVID pandemic as stuck-at-home consumers splurged on digital entertainment. Nintendo’s profits jumped by 82% in its 2020 fiscal year, driven by sales of Animal Crossing, its life-simulation game.

But Nintendo’s sales have declined as people returned to the office and as inflation has put a damper on some consumer spending. The company’s Switch console, released in 2017, is also reasonably old for a gaming device. The company’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa, said in February that Nintendo is now in “uncharted territory” when it comes to console sales.  

The Japanese game maker reported $3.6 billion in ordinary profits between March and December 2022, a 6.1% decrease from the same period a year earlier. The company also cut its full-year forecast, slashing ordinary profit estimates by 7.1%. Nintendo will announce full-year earnings on May 9. 

The company has pinned its hopes on using its characters in other media, such as the just-released Mario movie and Nintendo-themed amusement parks in Osaka and Los Angeles. 

But the company is still ambivalent on other trends in the industry, like games for mobile devices. “Mobile apps will not be the primary path of future Mario games,” Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario’s creator and Nintendo’s most famous game designer, told Variety before the release of the Mario movie. 

Nintendo has had to manage investor expectations around popular hits before. 

The company’s stock surged in 2016 after the release of Pokemon Go. The jump pushed Nintendo to clarify that it didn’t make the augmented-reality monster-catching game, and that the effect on Nintendo’s bottom line would be “limited.” 

Shares crashed by as much as 17% on the first trading day after Nintendo’s clarification.