Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. is a 2025 American-Japanese computer-animated action-adventure crossover film produced by Nintendo and Illumination, and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film was directed by Aaron Horvath and Pierre Coffin from a screenplay that Horvath written with Matthew Fogel and Quentin Tarantino, based on a story by Craig McCracken. As a standalone sequel to Super Mario (2023), it is the fourth feature-film adaptation of Nintendo's video game series Mario, following the 1993 live-action film Super Mario Bros. and the 1986 Japanese-only anime film ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.:_Peach-Hime_Kyushutsu_Dai_Sakusen! Super Mario Bros.: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen!]'' and serves as the second feature-film in the franchise.

It features the voice cast with Chris Pratt reprising his role of Mario, alongside Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Kevin Michael Richardson, Sebastian Maniscalco, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black and Charles Martinet. The film follows the story about Mario and Luigi who travel, including Bowser, Princess Peach and Yoshi to a different world where the leaders named Master Hand and Crazy Hand rules everyone who are also from their universes.

Development of Super Smash Bros. began after to the release of Super Mario with production beginning in 2024 under the working title Super Smash. At around 125 minutes in length, it is considered to be Illumination's longest animated film to date.

Super Smash Bros. held its world premiere at the El Capitan Theatre on Thanksgiving - November 27, 2025, then opening theatrically in limited release for a few weeks on December 11, 2025 before expanding into a wide release on December 26, 2025 in 3D, IMAX, RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema formats. Upon release, the film received mostly critical acclaim from critics, audiences and fans of the franchise with praise for its animation, screenplay, voice acting and the entertainment value. Against a production budget of around $100 million, Smash Bros grossed a worldwide total of $1.505 billion, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 2025 as well as the highest-grossing animated film released during the COVID-19 pandemic and the fifth-highest-grossing animated film of all time.

A sequel, titled Super Smash Bros II is in development with a release date set for December 25, 2027 while an untitled TV series is set to debut in Fall of 2026.

Premise
"'Smash Smash Bros.' follow the story about two twin brothers living in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) who unexpectedly traveled along with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Bowser (Jack Black), Yoshi (Frank Welker) and many more into a different universe where everyone from their own world are there and they all must defeat Master Hand and Crazy Hand before chaos broke loose."

Plot
TBA

Voice cast
Main article: Characters in the Mario franchise. For other uses: List of Pokeman characters and Characters in the Super Smash Bros. series.


 * Chris Pratt as Mario, the main protagonist.
 * Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, a mushroom-like person and is Peach's attendant.
 * Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, a gorilla who loves banana.
 * Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong, an old gorilla.
 * Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek, a turtle wizard and Bowser’s right hand man.
 * Sebastian Maniscalc as Foreman Spike, the brother's boss.
 * Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom.
 * Frank Welker as Yoshi.
 * Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy.
 * Charlie Day as Luigi, a cowardly friend and twin brother of Mario.
 * Jack Black as Bowser, Mario and Luigi's monstrous creature villain who mostly kidnaps Peach.
 * Charles Martinet as Wario who is a arch-rival of Mario
 * He also voice Waluigi, a friend of Wario, an arch-rival of Luigi and always cause problems.
 * Jacob Tremblay as Bowser. Jr, the son of his father, Bowser.
 * Nami Funashima as Fawful, who is the sidekick of Cackletta.
 * Ikue Ōtani as Pikachu.
 * Sarah Natochenny as Ash Ketchum, a trainer.
 * Originally, Ash was actually gonna to be called Red.
 * Michele Knotz as Pichu, who is the pre-evolved version of Pikachu.
 * Rina Hoshino as Mewtwo.
 * Rachael Lillis as Jigglypuff.
 * Makiko Ohmoto as Ness, a young boy who possesses extremely powerful PSI abilities.
 * Ben Schwartz as Sonic the Hedgehog, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog with superhuman speed.
 * Akira Sasanuma as Link.
 * Fujiko Takimoto as Young Link
 * Mike West as Fox McCloud, the leader of the Star Fox team.
 * Dex Manley as Falco Lombardi, an anthropomorphic bird, and is the best friend of Fox McCloud.
 * Billy Bob Thompson as Greninja.
 * Haley Joel Osment as Sora.

Development
Dated back to May of 2021, during the middle of production on the original film, Furukawa stated that the company, Nintendo was interested in producing even more animated films based on its IP, unless the feature was a hit at the box office. In June 2022, Charlie Day, the voice of Luigi expressed his interest starring in a sequel; he would later on return to voiced Luigi in the feature. By the middle of 2022, co-director Michael Jelenic pitched an idea for an another feature-film for Super Mario, but according to him, the project got turned down, mainly since it was "not the right time" to make a second Mario feature and that the original film was not released yet.

A couple of months in February of 2023, rumors were reported that Illumination were already working on the next film in the planned franchise, but this was proved to be wrong until on March 19, 2023 when Chris Pratt stated in an interview with Deadline that there have been talks about a new sequel or even a spin-off to Super Mario, despite the film not been green-lit by the studio yet. On July 22, 2023 at the San Diego Comic-Con, following the massive box office success of Super Mario in which had already grossed $800 million dollars, it was announced by Illumination that the yet-untitled sequel, known then as Super Mario II or Super Mario 2 by many people was reported to be in active development. In August of that same year, it was stated that Aaron Horvath who was the director of the original was returning.

Right after Super Smash Bros was green-lit, the team wanted to take the feature to a whole new level where instead of focusing on the comedy and the visuals, unlike their pervious feature-films like the unfunny jokes in Minions (2015) and the forced humor in Hop (2011), but into a much more "serious and darker" tone and this time, make the film not a spin-off or even a mid-sequel to Super Mario, but a type-of standalone sequel that was gonna be set in the same world as the first one, but now based on Nintendo's other Mario franchises; while they was having a hard time trying to pick which Mario series they can go next, Illumination eventually decided to go with the popular video games series called Super Smash Bros as it fit the tone that the crew was looking for. In an interview dated from October 2025, Chris Meledandri said that "while Super Smash Bros was very early in production, we started to notices that "most people criticize us" for a main reason and that reason is our films play it safe." He went on to say, "So, we decided to take the criticism super seriously this time and wanted to make the tone of the film to be instead focused on a more darker turn." In September, it was revealed that Matthew Fogel will be coming back to serve and penned the script alongside famous-Quentin Tarantino. Chris Meledandri explain that "We were trying and trying to find someone who can wrote an amazing screenplay for us because at the time, we had a issue with the script and right after, we found Quentin Tarantino and he was the perfect choose for us. On October 1, 2023, it was announced that the director of Super Mario, Aaron Horvath would return while Pierre Coffin will serve as the co-director for the film, replacing Michael Jelenic.

Nearing the end of 2023 and into 2024, the screenplay were reportedly being worked on by the screenwriters of Matthew Fogel and Quentin Tarantino and was planned to end its progress sometimes by the end of Winter the next year. Later during the same month at the New York Comic Con, an official release date was revealed for November 22, 2024; this was met with an negative response with the team and audiences working on the film who asked Illumination to change the release date, as the whole production will have to be rushed completely and about two weeks about in November of that same year, it was announced by both Nintendo and Illumination via Twitter that due to the criticism the announcement got, the film will be "removed" from its November 2024 release to a later timing and was due to the fact that it would have released on the same day of Warner Bros Picture's The Powerpuff Girls: The Movie: Generations, allowing more time to write the screenplay."'This is Meledandri . We realizes that lot of you have been not happy with the release date we had announced before and due to that, we decided to removed the global release date from its November 2024 release until we can find a later timing. For now, you have to wait for a while. Hope you understand us and thank you for listening.' -Chris Meledandri"Throughout the rest of the first half of 2024, no news about the upcoming film was given until March of 2024, when it was officially confirmed that the film now have a new release date, this time was set for July 19, 2025.

Writing
TBA

Marketing
The marketing campaign for Super Smash Bros reportedly costed around $700-750 million dollars, the most for any Illumination film and began with the reveal of the the first photo of the film, alongside the release of the 131-second teaser trailer for the film a day before the Super Bowl LIX on February 11, 2025 in which gained extremely positive reviews from users with many pointing out the character's design and the backgrounds. This trailer features two different songs from the Sonic and Mario video games, "Reach for the Stars" and a reworked version of "Main Theme".

At the San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, 2025, Twenty minutes of footage that was completed was shown to the audiences to even more positive reviews. In September of that year, the second and official trailer was released to the website Youtube to huge praise; in its 5 hours of the trailer being revealed online gained around 70 million views and as of September 2026, it had been viewed nearly 600 million times.

The last and final trailer was released in theaters on November 1, 2025, nearly a month before the world premiere of the film.

Books
Super Smash Bros, a 164-page book was released on January 16, 2026.

Video game
Nintendo announced on December 11, 2024 that a game, based on the film would be release exclusively for the Nintendo Switch and was released on January 18, 2026.

Theatrical
Super Smash Bros. was released on December 26, 2025 in the United States, and Japan on December 29, 2025 in 3D, IMAX, RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema formats. Initially, the film was stated for a release in November 22, 2024, but got moved up sometime later to July 19, 2025 due to a competing animated superhero film titled The Powerpuff Girls: The Movie: Generations set to be released that same day. It was then pushed up to November 13 before ultimately going with the current December release.

Super Smash Bros 's world premiere was held at the El Capitan Theatre, a month prior on November 27, 2025 - Thanksgiving.

Home media
Super Smash Bros. was released for digital download by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on January 30, 2026, and on Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, and DVD on February 9, 2026. It features a behind-the-scenes featurette called "The Making of Super Smash Bros" and deleted scenes that didn't made the final cut.

On its first day of release on Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, and DVD, the film had already sold 3.1 million copies.

Box office
Super Smash Bros. grossed $824.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $780.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.504 billion dollars. It was the fourth highest-grossing film of 2025 behind Frozen III (2025), including the highest-grossing video game film of all time behind Villagers and Pillagers - Part II, the second highest-grossing animated film released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the highest-grossing film that Illumination released ever and the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, just behind Frozen II (2019) and above The Lion King (2019).

On January 16, 2026, Super Smash Bros. passed the $1 billion dollars mark at the global box office. Its worldwide total of $374.8 million on its opening weekend

United States and Canada
In the United States and Canada, Super Smash Bros 's Fandango pre-sales went to the top and became the fasting-selling family film with the tickets being completely sold in about four hours. Early tracking reported that the film was expected to made around $60 - 65 million dollars during its three-day opening weekend with some estimates expecting a debut to be around $80 million and by the time, Super Smash Bros 's release was about 5 days away, analysts reached the projections even as high as $100 million. Illumination projected the gross to be around $90 million dollars.

The film opened nationwide on Friday, December 26, 2025 (the day after Christmas Day) in 5,027 theaters across 10,000 screens, 1,052 of which were in IMAX, a new record for an IMAX PG title and making its the widest release ever, surpassing the record of Avengers: Endgame 's 4,662 theaters, the biggest for an animated film and to top it all off, Super Smash Bros set numerous of notable records in which the film gained a total of $46.4 million on its opening day, including a record-breaking $49.2 million from its Thursday night previews, of which the IMAX screenings gained a record-breaking total of $12 million dollars from 483 screens. It eventually grossed a total of around $116.4 million in its first three day of release, finishing first place at the box office and broke the opening record for a video game movie adaptation that was previously held by Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), becoming the sixth highest opening weekend debut for an animated film of all time after Inside Out 2 's (2024) $97 million during the COVID-19 pandemic; plus, the film already surpass $100 million dollars domestically in just a single weekend and the opening debut earning was one of the best for an Illumination film, after Minions (2015) which grossed $115.7 million and was the the biggest for a Illumination animated feature adaptation after Super Mario (2023). The debut was marked to be 0.6% higher than Minions and was also the biggest opening weekend ever for a feature that wasn't even rated PG-13, the best pre-spring/holiday opening, the highest-grossing start to date for an animated movie in the month of December, and the biggest start ever for a PG title. The numbers for that film were considered very impressive, given the fact that it was released just a week and month, respectively after the debut of a two major competing films, titled Star Wars: Lost Horizons (2025) and Avengers: Secret Wars (2025), plus the budget for this feature was bigger than any films that Illumination produced with $100 million and plus, an huge snow-blizzard had struck the Southern and North Coast of the United States around four days into the film's theatrical run.

On its second weekend from January 2 - 4, 2026, Smash Bros. made $75.5 million dollars at the box office, in which gained $21 million (a 78% drop) on Friday, $28 million (a 33% drop) on Saturday and $26 million (a 7% drop) on Sunday, sightly less than its results from the opening debut, nevertheless it continue to ranked at first place and became the third-best second weekend ever; around that time, the film had grossed nearly $200 million dollars at the box office. On its seventh day of release, the film experienced a major drop by 66%, making around $39 million dollars; mainly due to people going back to school or work, but the drop continue on as during its third and fourth weekend from January 9 - 11 and January 16 - 18, 2026, the film drop to second place after grossing $37.7 million and $32 million dollars, respectively. On its firth weekend (January 23 - 25), the film made $38 million dollars, a bit higher from the third's weekend results. On its sixth weekend (January 30 - February 1, 2026), the film experienced a major drop, only making around $5-6 million; this was mainly due to the fact that Smash Bros. was released for digital download on that same day, finishing fourth place and by April 2026, the film had grossed $711.4 million.

On Monday, May 25, 2026, the film officially finished its box office projections finished with a domestic total of $724.6 million dollars.

Other territories
Outside of the United States and Canada, Smash Bros began playing on Monday, December 29, 2025 in 13 markets and grossed $41 million dollars on its opening day.

Critical response
Super Smash Bros. received near-critical acclaim from critics, audiences and long-time fans alike with many heavily praising the animation, screenplay, musical score, voice acting and its entertainment value. Deadline Hollywood reported that reviewers, especially the people who grow up with Mario considered Super Smash Bros to be Illumination's greatest film ever. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 246 professional reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.4/10, making it the highest-rated film produced by Illumination to date. Its critical consensus's reads, "Impressively animated, great storyline and with its amazing humor, Super Smash Bros. is nothing short, but a wonderful time for the whole family to watch". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 94 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "critical acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare rating of "A+" on a A+ to F scale.

Sequel
"Main article: Super Smash Bros II"On June 8, 2026, it was officially announced by Illumination that a sequel, titled Super Smash Bros II was in its early stages of development and is set to released in theaters on December 25, 2027.