In April 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the latest hit film for Illumination, which made the retro videogame adaptation for a relatively modest $100 million and saw it gross more than $1.3 billion at the global box office. Beyond its commercial success, Super Mario showed how two companies—Illumination and Nintendo—could collaborate as producers to create entertainment appealing to fans of all ages. (A first attempt to adapt the game into a movie in 1993 was a dud.) By drawing on story lines from early Super Mario games and bringing characters like Bowser to life with show-stopping ballads voiced by Jack Black, the film drew in both young gamers and parents who recall the game from the 1980s: More than one-quarter of moviegoers who saw the film on opening weekend went to screenings after 7 p.m.
In December, Illumination released its first original film since 2016, Migration, a story of Mallard ducks heading to Jamaica for winter, written by Mike White (White Lotus) and featuring the voices of Awkwafina, Danny DeVito, and Kumail Nanjiani. The film grossed $256 million globally by mid-February, making it another profitable hit (if not a runaway blockbuster) for the company.
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