GWR ICON Mario could break even more records as his latest movie hits cinemas

Published 02 April 2026

Will The Super Mario Galaxy Movie break new world records for a GWR ICON?

This weekend we’re all celebrating the launch of the latest Mario movie – that being, of course, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (USA). This super sequel is poised to become a potential record breaker, after the success of its predecessor The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Mario himself was of course recently inducted as a GWR ICON in the GWR 2026 book, in recognition of his longevity, cross-genre adaptability and multigenerational appeal among gamers over the past four decades.

He’s the best-selling videogame character of all time, beating the likes of Link from Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, Microsoft’s HALO stalwart Masterchief, and even Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes, the blue blur couldn’t outpace the little Italian plumber.

And now Mario is back on the silver screen! His first foray in 2023 was an unbelievable success, becoming the highest-grossing movie based on a videogame. It made an incredible $1.3 billion (£1.07 billion) at the box office, even more than A Minecraft Movie (USA/Sweden/New Zealand/Canada, 2025). Don’t feel too bad for that literal blockbuster though – A Minecraft Movie is still the highest-grossing live action movie based on a videogame and the song “Steve’s Lava Chicken” also broke records for the shortest song to enter the UK singles chart and the shortest song to enter the US singles chart.

But the Mario movies are all animated, with an all-star voice cast. Mario, voiced by Chris Pratt (USA), is once again joined by his brother Luigi, who’s brought to life by Charlie Day (USA). And then of course there’s Princess Peach, played by Anya Taylor Joy (UK). This time we’re also seeing Mario’s Dinosaur pal Yoshi, as well as Fox McCloud of jet-powered Starfox fame – Donald Glover and Glenn Howerton, respectively (both USA).

Mario’s previous voice actor through the games, Charles Martinet (USA), holds the record for the most videogame voice performances as the same character, having played the plumber 114 times between 1995 and 2023. Charles has since hung up his red overalls and cap, but still enjoys being the official Mario Ambassador.

This new movie is based on the videogame Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD Tokyo, 2007), which is a beloved classic from Mario’s back catalogue. It was the most critically acclaimed Super Mario game for many years, with a score of 97 on review aggregator Metacritic, but was overtaken – by the slimmest of margins – by 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey. Odyssey also has a 97, but garnered 56 perfect 10/10 scores, putting it in pole position.

So all-in-all, with such a pedigree behind it, will it break the old Mario movie’s box office record? Will it overtake live action superhero epics? We’ll let you know.

Header image: A still from the Super Mario Galaxy 2 re-release on Switch 2