The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)

When The Super Mario Bros. Movie grossed $1.36 billion in 2023, Universal and Nintendo faced an impossible sequel challenge. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie answers it by thinking bigger in every dimension. Moving the action from the Mushroom Kingdom to the cosmos, the film sends Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, and Bowser on a galaxy-hopping adventure to recover the stolen Power Stars from the villainous Cosmic Ruler Bealica. What makes The Super Mario Galaxy Movie work as more than a brand extension is its decision to take its source material seriously as mythology. The Honeyhive Galaxy sequence alone — rendered with bees the size of school buses and flowers that sing in harmony — has generated more social media attention than any single sequence in a 2026 blockbuster. The IMAX-optimized framing gives the film visual ambition that transcends the standard animated feature aesthetic. Chris Pratt returns as Mario with noticeably more comedic confidence, and a subplot about Mario confronting his fear of failure gives the film an emotional core the original lacked. The film's $130.9 million domestic opening was the biggest 2026 debut, and it crossed $1 billion worldwide — the first film of the year to do so — in record time. The CinemaScore was an A- and the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 90%.