Everett Collection

It’s a box office Koopa d’état.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” continues to super smash its opening projections, drawing $55 million from 4,343 theaters on Friday. Released Wednesday, the film has already earned $137 million in domestic ticket sales. If every dollar were a coin, that would amount to 1.37 million 1-Up mushrooms. That’s a lot of extra lives.

The Universal and Illumination film is still on track for a $195 million opening in North America over the five-day Easter weekend frame. That’s way ahead of the $150 million projections that were being reported at the start of the week. Even more impressively, “Super Mario Bros.” now looks to leap to a $368 million global debut. That would become the biggest ever opening for an animated film, though that comes with a huge caveat. The current record holder, 2019’s “Frozen II,” earned $358 million over a traditional three-day window.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” features a voice cast that includes Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach and Jack Black as Bowser. Unlike the hit Nintendo video game series it’s based on, the film hasn’t earned glowing nods from critics, drawing a 44% rating from top critics on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman was quite charmed though, calling the film “a serious blast, with a spark of enchantment — that je ne sais quoi fusion of speed and trickery, magic and sophistication, and sheer play that… well, you feel it when you see it.”

“Mario Bros.” seems to be a home run with audiences too. The film notched an “A” grade through research firm Cinema Score, indicating resounding approval from the first round of ticket buyers. The animated adventure has landed well with super fans of the video games as well as family audiences, who have been starved of a wide release targeted at them since the debut of DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” over the holidays, more than three months ago.

Also new at the box office this weekend is Ben Affleck’s “Air,” the tale of how Nike and Michael Jordan struck their historic footwear deal. “Air” also opened on Wednesday, and has earned $6 million already, putting its weekend estimates around $16 million.

More to come…