The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Jack Black Performed ‘Peaches’ From The ‘Mario’ Movie Live For The First Time

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Jack Black Peaches Super Mario Bros Screenshot
YouTube

Jack Black had the biggest hit of his career with “Peaches,” Bower’s yearning ballad for Princess Peach from The Super Mario Bros. Movie (coincidentally, the biggest movie of 2023). Over the weekend, at the Game Awards’ 10–Year Concert, the Tenacious D member performed the song live for the first time.

Black was accompanied by a full orchestra, but no Toad on the maracas. A real missed opportunity there. Still, you can watch it below.

Also during the show, Black’s band Tenacious D performed their own Mario-adjacent song, the recent single “Video Games.”

Black was initially hesitant to sing in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is maybe the first time he’s ever be hesitant to break into a tasty jam.

“We had already had a few sessions; I think we were a year in when [directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic] first sprung it on me,” he told IGN. “They were like, ‘How would you feel about Bowser singing a song?’ And I was like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’ I’m very protective about my singing career with my band, Tenacious D.” But once he heard “Peaches,” Black “couldn’t deny that it was funny. I was like, I get it. I see why you want Bowser to do this, tickling the ivories and singing a love song to Peaches. It was undeniable.”

Also undeniable: “Peaches” deserving an Oscar nomination. Tenacious D was robbed once before; don’t make it twice.

(Via Nintendo Life)

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” Breaks $1B

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie has officially broken the $1 billion mark at the box office. At the time of writing, the joint project between Nintendo and Illumination Studios has grossed $1.045 billion worldwide. It is now the eighth-highest-grossing Universal release of all time. Furthemore, it is just $7 million shy of becoming Universal’s second-ever film to gross $500 million at the box office.

The film is also still being received incredibly well. While it still holds a 59% critics rating, it also has a 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has proven to be a smash-hit, both with fans of the games and general audiences alike. But where does the genre go from here?

What’s Next For Video Game Adaptations?

2023 has been a year of both critical and financial success for the video game adaptation genre. On the financial side, you have The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the first video game adaptation to make $1 billion at the box office. But 2023 has also seen critical successes. The primary example of this is HBO’s The Last Of Us. Also upcoming is the much-anticipated third season of The Witcher. Elsewhere, Season 2 of Halo is reportedly in production, despite middling reviews for the first. In short, video game adaptations are big business right now.

So now the genre stands at a crossroads. On the one hand, this year’s successes have shown that there is a market for well-received, financially successful video game adaptation. But to find that success, you need to invest the time, effort, and money to create an adaptation that the engrained fanbase you are inheriting will enjoy. Because at the end of the day, while mass appeal is all well and good, the driving force behind the success of your video game project is getting the long-standing fans on board. For example, the Jason Mamoa-led Minecraft has been relentlessly mocked on social media after it was announced. There are dozens of reported video game adaptations in the works. However, the current “golden age” of the genre depends on studios learning the right lessons from the successes of Mario and The Last Of Us.

[via]

Mario Movie Projected To Top $1 Billion Worldwide

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People love The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The film, which has a stacked cast led by Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Jack Black, has been a smash hit. After strong early reviews, the film is still holding its own. At the time of writing, it has a 59% critics rating and a 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s a 6% increase in the critics rating and a 2% dip in the audience rating from opening day.

The film has also been a financial success. Its domestic opening was recorded at $146 million. It made $58.2 million this past weekend. Having topped the box office for three straight weeks, it is already starting to break records and milestones across the board. Additionally, people are starting to wonder just how successful the film will be. What heights could the film reach?

Mario Movie Headed For $1 Billion

At the time of writing, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has a domestic gross of $434,329,610. That makes it the third-highest-grossing domestic film ever released by Universal. It only trails 2015’s Jurassic World and 1987’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. Furthermore, it is Universal’s best-ever performing animated filming. It easily cruised past the mark set by 2022’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru. Universal’s all-time-grossing film, both worldwide and domestic, is 2015’s Jurassic World. The reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise brought in $1,669,963,641. However, that figure included a $1 billion international gross, which helped the film’s profits immensely.

However, according to DiscussingFilm, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is set to join a very exclusive club. The film’s worldwide gross currently sits at $876,438,061, best for 12th in Universal’s catalog. However, Mario is expected wahoo his way past $1 billion this week. If that’s the case, the film will become Universal’s 9th $1 billion film. The last film from the studio to reach that mark was 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. It would also become the 11th animated film to break $1 billion, and the third from Universal. While domestic sales are starting to drop, falling 37% between its second and third week, the film is still north of $50 million per week. It’s likely that it will at the very least take the #2 spot from ET before it leaves theatres.

[via]

Jack Black’s Oscar-Eligible ‘Mario’ Ballad ‘Peaches’ Could Become The Biggest Song Of His Career

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Jack Black Peaches Super Mario Bros Screenshot
YouTube

Harry Styles, Jennifer Lopez, Eminem, Prince, and Beyoncé are the only artists who had the number one movie and song in the country in the same week. Jack Black won’t quite get there, but he’ll come closer than anyone expected. Even though we probably should have, because there’s nothing the Tenacious D singer can’t do (including playing Batman, hopefully).

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is expected to finish #1 at the box office for a second straight weekend, while “Peaches,” the Oscar-eligible ballad sung by Bowser (voiced by Black), is climbing up the charts. “The song got off to a strong start in streaming and sales, and has only grown in the days since, as the movie has conquered theaters nationwide,” according to Billboard. “It’s risen from 218,000 daily official on-demand U.S. streams and about 500 digital song sales on April 7 in its first full day of release to 961,000 and 1,000 in streams and sales on April 10 – gains of 342 percent and 104 percent.”

“Peaches” could appear on the Billboard Hot 100 “within the next week or two” (it’s rapidly rising on the global Spotify chart), which would be a first for Black as a solo artist. With Tenacious D, he and Kyle Gass reached #78 with “POD” from The Pick of Destiny. (“Tribute,” the second single from the D’s first album, peaked at #4 in Australia, but failed to chart in the United States.)

Come on, TikTok, do your thing, and get “Peaches” on the Hot 100. And while you’re at it, make “Kyle Quit the Band” go viral, too.

(Via Billboard)

‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Is The Latest Film To Rely On One Of Pop Culture’s Most Overused Needle Drops

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universal

So much of the worry about The Super Mario Bros. Movie before the film came out was about Chris Pratt and his Mario voice surrounding like, well, Chris Pratt. It turns out: he did fine! He wasn’t the Oscar-worthy MVP (that was always going to be Jack Black, and it was), but he wasn’t the low point of the otherwise fun animated movie. No, that would be the use of a certain song during the scene where Mario and Peach are in the Jungle Kingdom.

The time has come to shut the door on “Take on Me” by a-Ha.

As explained by Henry Gilbert of the Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts, “Drivin’ Me Bananas,” a better, more Mario appropriate song, was swapped out to make room for the overplayed 1980s hit. “No joke, this awesome piece of music isn’t in the movie,” he tweeted. “It was cut to instead play ‘Take On Me.’ That obvious song choice was one of the most painfully lazy moments in the film, and it’s even more annoying knowing they previously had a great score it replaced.”

The scene works much better with “Drivin’ Me Bananas.”

A note to studio executives, soundtrack producers, and 1980s-loving film editors everywhere: it’s 2023. Can’t we be done with “Take on Me”? It’s a fine song and all, but it’s been overused to the point of exhaustion. Since 2018, “Take on Me” has been heard in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, The Last of Us (to be fair, it served a narrative purpose there), something called My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Love Island, The Goldbergs, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Single Parents, Bumblebee, Riverdale, America’s Got Talent, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, Beat Shazam, Deadpool 2, Ash vs. Evil Dead, and Antiques Road Trip. Antique is right — at least Bones and All had the guts to use a different a-ha song.

“Take on Me,” originally released in 1984 and re-recorded in 1985, wasn’t always a cliché, however. It had to start somewhere. According to IMDb, the first use of the song in a scripted TV show or movie was… Beavis and Butt-Head! It’s supposedly in season two’s “The Butt-Head Experience,” but the episode isn’t available anywhere online. The streaming model works again.

(There’s also a compilation album called The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience with songs from Nirvana, Megadeth, and White Zombie. Let’s replace every “Take on Me” with “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.”)

If Beavis and Butt-Head doesn’t technically count (they are just watching and commenting on the music video, after all), the first non-diegetic “Take on Me” needle drop is 1997’s Grosse Pointe Blank, the John Cusack assassin movie with a score from Joe Strummer. So if you want to blame anyone for the exhausting use of “Take on Me” in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, blame the lead singer of The Clash (please do not do this, he didn’t pick the soundtrack).

As for the best use of “Take on Me”: to paraphrase Steven Yeun in Nope, Kattan crushed it.

Jack Black’s ‘Peaches’ Song From ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Is Eligible For The 2024 Oscars

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One of the surprise delights that awaited viewers of The Super Mario Bros. Movie was another classic Jack Black musical moment — one that has the internet’s attention in a chokehold. “Peaches,” a power ballad sung by Black as the film’s villain Bowser, who secretly pines for the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom, has quickly become a fan favorite on social media.

Well, here’s some good news for those fans: According to Variety, “Peaches” will be eligible to win a Best Original Song Oscar at next year’s Academy Awards. Which, if you ask the legions of newly converted Bowswer fans, is an award it already has in the bag.

Universal appears to know this as well; in addition to highlighting the song on social media, the studio even commissioned a music video featuring Jack Black directed by hip-hop’s go-to director Cole Bennett, who applies his signature colorful aesthetic to the video.

The music in The Super Mario Bros. Movie has turned out to be an unexpected star with both classic pop needle drops and not one, but two notoriously bad Ninento-related raps of the ’90s returning to introduce heroes the Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. The cast even made an appearance on late-night TV to perform an acapella version of the game’s iconic theme song.

Check out Bowser’s “Peaches” video above and try not to get it stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

‘The Super Mario Bros Movie’ Opens with $377M Global Opening

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The world is going crazy over The Super Mario Bros Movie. The movie is now the biggest global opening for an animated film. The movie made a total of $377.5 million, $172.8 million of that total comes from international tickets.

According to Deadline, the film is potentially a billion-dollar film if the performance continues on this trajectory. The film is now the biggest video game adaptation ever and the fourth-biggest Hollywood opening movie since the beginning of the pandemic.

Showing the power of the film, The Super Mario Bros movie opened to $27.4 million in Mexico, the third biggest opening weekend for the country in all time. The film is still to come to the Korean and Japan markets.

The Super Mario Bros. movie stars Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charles Martinet, Jack Black, Charlie Day, Keegan-Michael Key, and more.

The post ‘The Super Mario Bros Movie’ Opens with $377M Global Opening appeared first on The Source.

The Writer Of The ‘Worst Rap Track In The History Of Rap’ Is Thrilled That His Song Might Be In The ‘Mario’ Movie

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universal

Grant Kirkhope composed the scores for some of the most well-known video games ever, including GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie. But his greatest contribution to culture is rhyming “dudes” with “mood” — and he’s OK with that. Kirkhope penned the lyrics to the Donkey Kong 64 intro song “DK Rap,” which Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, called “objectively one of the worst rap songs of all-time.”

In response, Kirkland tweeted, “If you’d told me in ‘97, when I wrote the worst rap track in the history of rap tracks, that it would go on to be in a Mario Bros movie I’d would’ve burst with excitement! Long live the DK Rap!”

Let’s give it up for Kirkland for resisting the “my name is [BLANK] and I’m here to say” cliché. Although now I want to know what Lanky Kong is here to say…

Rogen discussed his opposite of method acting approach to voicing DK in the Mario movie (let Jeremy Strong voice Diddy Kong). “I was very clear, I don’t do voices,” he told Comic Book. “And if you want me to be in this movie, it’s gonna sound like me and that’s it. And that was the beginning and end of that conversation.” He is the leader of the bunch, after all.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie opens on April 5.

The Cast Of ‘The Super Mario Bros Movie’ Sang The Game’s Iconic Theme With The Roots And A Special Guest

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie is just a month away from hitting theaters and the Nintendo/Illumination PR team is going all-out to promote it. In addition to crafting an interactive website for a hypothetical Mario Bros. plumbing business and releasing a new, final trailer yesterday showing off even more of its Mad Max-inspired Rainbow Road sequence.

The cast and crew weren’t done yet, though. The film’s voice actors — consisting of Chris Pratt, Jack Black, Anya Taylor-Joy, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, and Charlie Day — stopped by The Tonight Show for a musical sketch in which they sing the iconic Super Mario Bros. video game theme song acapella alongside the show’s host Jimmy Fallon and house band The Roots.

In a Brady Bunch-like sequence, each singer appears in their own squares, which slide and shift across the screen while scenes from both the video game and the movie scroll by. Jack Black appears to be having an utter blast, especially when the game’s underground theme kicks in. Then, as they all reach the “end” of the level, they’re joined by a few more special guests: Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination founder Chris Meledandri (who gets vocal backup from the Minions, naturally).

It’s a cute bit, which is to be expected from The Tonight Show, but it’s also a testament to how truly iconic and generational the Mario brand has been for the past four decades.

Watch the clip above.