The Super Mario Bros. Movie Battles The Pope's Exorcist At The Box Office In A Troubling Display Of Italian-On-Italian Violence

Update, Sunday 16 April: With Saturday ticket sales numbers in, Variety reports that "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" collected even more gold coins than expected. The animated movie added another $87 million to its domestic total, marking a drop of just 41% from its opening weekend. Meanwhile, "Renfield" opened in fourth place with $7.7 million, behind "John Wick: Chapter 4" ($7.925 million) and "The Pope's Exorcist" ($9.1 million). Original article follows.

Mamma mia! The meatballs and spaghetti sauce are a-flying at the box office this weekend as new release "The Pope's Exorcist" collides with last week's reigning champion, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie." Oh, and "Renfield" is also out this weekend, but there aren't really any big Italian themes in that movie.

Perhaps that's why "Renfield" is off to a pretty dismal start. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the horror-comedy about Dracula's co-dependent relationship with his bug-powered familiar was expected to debut at No. 2, but instead looks set to take third place in its opening weekend. The film, led by Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult, is projected to gross $7.5 million this weekend, which isn't great given its $65 million production budget. It's safe to say that "The Croods" will continue to be Cage's biggest box office hit for the time being.

There's slightly better news for Julius Avery's supernatural thriller "The Pope's Exorcist," in which Russell Crowe gives 100 percent commitment to his Italian accent. Crowe is playing the role of Father Gabriele Amorth, a renowned real-life exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, who died in 2016 from (as far as we know) non-demon-related causes. Produced for $18 million, the film is projected to gross between $8.5 million and $9 million at the box office this weekend, taking second place. "Renfield" and "The Pope's Exorcist" may have cannibalized each other somewhat by competing for horror fans' wallets, but there's a huge gulf between both of those releases and the No. 1 spot.

The unstoppable juggernaut that is "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is expected to add another $80 million to its total over the weekend, based on Friday's ticket sales. That would be a drop of just 45% from last weekend's three-day total of $146 million, which is particularly impressive since mammoth opening weekends are typically a feature of front-loaded franchise movies, which are followed by a sharp drop-off in subsequent weeks. Instead, the brothers Mario seem to be enjoying the best of both worlds: a huge opening in the typical range of a Marvel Studios movie, with the stamina of kid-oriented animated movies like recent sleeper hit "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish."

To recap, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" has already smashed through a bunch of box office records. It had the biggest ever opening weekend for a video game movie, and within a week had already become the biggest video game movie of all time. Per Deadline, the film is expected to gross an estimated $659 million by the end of this weekend, with $318 million of that coming from international markets. It's already the highest-grossing movie of the year, both domestically and worldwide, and has set a high target to beat for the tentpoles still to come this year.

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" received mixed reviews from critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 58 percent, but it has an "A" CinemaScore from audience exit polling — indicative of a crowd-pleaser. It certainly doesn't hurt to have one of the most recognizable characters in the world on the posters, but coupled with the success of "The Last Wish," things are looking very positive for animated movies. 

A final word on that note: this weekend also saw the U.S. release of Makoto Shinkai's "Suzume," which is expected to gross a respectable $4.7 million to $5 million across 2,170 screens — though that's just a cherry on top of the $256.1 million it has already made in its home country of Japan.