The most recent Nintendo financial report is packed full of sales figures for games and consoles alike, but let's not forget that the Big-N is now in the world of films too. On a note about expanding the company's IP, the report revealed the viewing numbers from The Super Mario Bros. Movie's box office which is estimated (by Universal Pictures) to have pulled in a whopping 168.10 million viewers.
This will likely come as no surprise. The Mario Movie was breaking records straight out of the gate, quickly becoming the highest-grossing video game adaptation after just one week. It has since gone on to become one of the biggest animated movies of all time with a box office taking of $1.349 billion, according to the report — Nintendo describes this as "the second-highest for an animated film" though figures from Box Office Mojo place the 2019's The Lion King and Frozen 2 above it.
We should note that unique viewing numbers are difficult to determine. Some of that 168 million figure will be made up of people going back for multiple rewatches — not that that diminishes the film's reach, but it's worth bearing in mind.
So wide is the reach of the Mario Movie, in fact, that the financial report reconfirms Nintendo's desire to continue working in "visual content-related initiatives" in the future:
By expanding Nintendo IP in areas outside the dedicated video game platform we create new opportunities for consumers to encounter Nintendo IP, and this invigorates our overall business. Based on the various effects that we have confirmed through the release of this movie, we will continue our efforts towards visual content-related initiatives.
Whether this necessarily means more feature-length movies remains to be seen (we'd be very surprised if it didn't), but it certainly sounds like we will be seeing a lot more of Nintendo on the big (and maybe small) screen in the future.