Despite being one of the biggest movies of the year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie failed to rank #1 in its first weekend on streaming.
Illumination Entertainment's animated take on Nintendo's iconic plumber was a hit with audiences when it came to theaters earlier this year.
The film ended up taking home a $1.36 billion global box office haul, breaking a record previously set by Disney's mega-hit Frozen 2 in the process.
So, surely the Chris Pratt-led romp through the Mushroom Kingdom was going to clean up when it came to Universal's Peacock streaming service. Well, maybe not.
The Mario Movie Misses #1
According to new data, The Super Mario Bros. Movie did not top the streaming ranking in its first weekend on Universal's Peacock streamer.
Whip Media's streaming chart for the weekend of August 4-6, 2023, revealed the Mario Movie failed to hit #1 across all streaming services, coming in behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 which topped the charts after coming to Disney+ that very same weekend.
For comparison, (via data from Samba TV), The Super Mario Bros. Movie was streamed by 881,000 US households over its first four days of streaming, while Guardians 3 was watched by 1.3 million US homes over its first five days.
This Mario Movie figure makes the film the biggest animated debut on the Peacock streaming service, beating out Boss Baby: Family Business, which hit 783,000 US households over its first streaming weekend.
Universal's biggest streaming debut on Peacock still belongs to 2021's Halloween Kills at 1.2 million US households.
Why Did Mario Fail To Top the Streaming Charts?
Given The Mario Movie's resounding success at the box office earlier this year, and the positive momentum the film had been seeing headed into its Peacock release, one would have thought it would have taken the top spot over its first weekend on streaming.
However, that was not the case, and now fans are likely going to sit and wonder why Illumination's animated epic missed out on #1.
What is the most probable case here was simply the difference in users between Disney+ and Peacock.
NBC-Universal's streaming hub has failed to permeate the market quite like Disney's has. Disney+ bolsters 157.8 million subscribers (via Disney's Q3 2023 earnings call), while Peacock hosts a meager 22 million subs (as of April 2023).
So, The Mario Movie had the deck stacked against it from the very beginning. One can only imagine what sort of numbers the animated comedy would have done had it been released on a bigger streaming service like Disney+.
To put it into perspective, if Mario had been watched by the same percentage of subs on Disney+ as it had on Peacock (4% of total users), the movie would have been streamed by 6.3 million subscribers in its first weekend.
While that figure is hypothetical and does not take into account a lot of factors, it makes one ogle at the uphill battle The Mario Movie had going up against a heavy-hitter like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hitting a major streaming player like Disney+.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is available now on Peacock.
