by Lori Twichell
In case you missed it, the big movie everyone is talking about right now is The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It stunned everyone out of the gate with a massive opening weekend and as of this morning is sitting at $678 million globally.
I took my kids to an early screening. They are young adults now but since they were little, our post-movie ritual on the drive home has always been the same: what did you love, what disappointed you? This time there was a lot of silence in the car. Ultimately the conversation landed on something interesting. There was nothing bad about the movie. Nothing disappointing. But we also could not point to anything we really loved. Jack Black as Bowser was genuinely fun. But on the whole it was just sort of…bland.
So why is a bland movie sitting at $678 million?
The Argument Nobody Wants to Make
In my opinion it is pretty simple. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is built on a massively established IP, it is appropriate for every age group, and there is nothing offensive, controversial, politically pointed in either direction, or alienating anywhere in it. The biggest controversies were Chris Pratt voicing the main character and John Leguizamo’s diversity comments. Both hit the news cycle and faded within days.
That is not an accident. That is a strategy, whether intentional or not. A film that does not ask you to pick a side does not give anyone a reason to stay home.
This connects directly to something I have been saying to clients for years. Every choice you make about your film’s messaging, marketing, and public positioning is an audience architecture decision. You are either opening the door wider or narrowing it. The Super Mario Bros. Movie left every door wide open. The box office reflects exactly that.
The Message Hollywood Already Got
Over my years in film marketing and publicity I have heard countless filmmakers tell me that audiences need to go see their movie to send Hollywood a message. Among faith filmmakers especially there is an almost constant refrain: “They need to know we are here.”
Here is what I know from the other side of those conversations. The big Hollywood machine already knows you are here. At the same time filmmakers were telling me we needed to send a message, I was hearing from production companies, networks, and studios that they actively wanted content for faith audiences. Look at what Hallmark did with a handful of clean Christmas movies. Now every year starting in October you cannot escape them. Hollywood did not need a message. It needed a market signal. Those are different things.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is its own kind of market signal. A film with no agenda, no controversy, and no built-in reason to alienate any segment of the audience just generated $678 million. That is not a fluke. That is an audience that was simply waiting to be invited in without conditions attached.
The Takeaway
In an industry that increasingly assesses every piece of content for who or what it aligns with, this movie just made the argument for simplicity louder than any think piece could. No agenda. No overcomplicated positioning. Just a fun, broadly accessible film that showed up at the right moment and left every seat in the house available to anyone who wanted it.
The lesson is right there in the numbers.
About the Author
