The ensemble voice cast includes Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and Fred Armisen.

Such transitions took time for the company, and Miyamoto recognized that "our content business would be able to develop even further if we were able to combine our long-beloved software with that of video assets, and utilize them together for extended periods".

Pascal suggested recruiting Sony Pictures Animation's Hotel Transylvania director Genndy Tartakovsky to help develop the project, while Kouyate said she could "think of 3–4 movies right out of the gate" and hoped to build a "Mario empire".

[20] Following the full casting announcement, Horvath and Jelenic were confirmed to be directing, with Matthew Fogel attached as the screenwriter after previously scribing Illumination's Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022).

[26] The duo wanted the film to serve as an "origin story" for Mario and Luigi, opting to portray them as "blue-collar guys" by focusing on their previous backgrounds as Italian-American plumbers from New York City in early games (specifically Brooklyn, as in older American media).

[27] The duo drew inspiration from Super Mario 3D World (2013) and its portrayal of Peach as a playable character, stating they wanted to focus on her role as the Mushroom Kingdom's monarch and "how strong that person would need to be to protect [the Toads]".

[30] During a September 2021 Nintendo Direct presentation, Shigeru Miyamoto announced that Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Kevin Michael Richardson, Fred Armisen, and Maniscalco would headline the voice cast and that Martinet would be featured in "surprise cameos".

"[45] The pair brought in artists they had previously worked with from their television background, and elected head of story Ed Skudder with storyboarding the Rainbow Road sequence, which they also described as the film's most technically challenging.

While Illumination's animation already controlled lighting and color,[47] Hanel made final scene-by-scene adjustments to enhance realism and maintain consistency.

The transition from Brooklyn's realism to the Mushroom Kingdom's fantasy was refined through color grading,[47] with effects like digital lens flares and atmospheric lighting reinforcing a cinematic feel.

[48] He described the composition as "big", featuring an orchestra, choir and bands, as well as "Italian instruments, accordions, live drums, mandolins [...] whistling human voices", and "eight-bit [sounds]".

In a short questions and answers period following the trailer reveal at New York Comic Con, Jack Black stated that "Bowser has a musical side" in the film, teasing a theme for the character.

and the 1993 film,[64] before Charles Martinet debuted as the character's official voice actor in Mario's Game Gallery where he spoke full dialogue for extended periods of time.

[67] On December 8, the first clip of the film, showing Toad guiding Mario through the Mushroom Kingdom and to the entrance to Peach's Castle, was revealed at The Game Awards 2022.

[73][74] The Super Mario Bros. Movie held its world premiere at Regal L.A. Live in Los Angeles, California on April 1, 2023, with the cast and crew in attendance.

[2] On May 11, 2023, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) collaborated with the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to organize a special screening of The Super Mario Bros. Movie in honor of World Intellectual Property Day.

[93] On April 30, 2023, a pirated copy of the film was leaked onto Twitter by an account titled "vids that go hard", and was viewed by at least 9 million users in roughly 7 hours, before being removed by moderators.

[102] Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $559 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations and other costs; box office grosses, television and streaming, and home media revenues placing it first on their list of 2023's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".

[103] In the United States and Canada, The Super Mario Bros. Movie was released alongside Air,[104] and was initially projected to gross roughly $125 million from 4,025 theaters in its five-day opening weekend.

[112][113] The film continued to dominate the box office in its fourth weekend, grossing $40 million and crossing the global $1 billion mark on April 30.

The website's consensus reads: "While it's nowhere near as thrilling as turtle tipping your way to 128 lives, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a colorful—albeit thinly plotted—animated adventure that has about as many Nintendos as Nintendon'ts.

[128] Ross Bonaime of Collider gave a positive review, writing, "Obviously, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is in many ways a feature-length advertisement for Nintendo as a brand.

However, Jelenic, Horvath, and [F]ogel make this feel more like a labor of love, as they've been given the keys to the (Mushroom) kingdom, and are allowed to go all-in with what any fan would want to see in a film like this.

Jorgensen had slight criticism towards Pratt and Day's attempt at New York accents for Mario and Luigi as "certainly not going to be taking home any commendations from the good people of Brooklyn" and stated, "There's definitely been a flattening of the more cartoonish qualities".

[133] Brian Tallerico of Roger Ebert, a self-described lifelong fan, wrote that the vocal performances were "uniformly mediocre", and that the film is Illumination's "most soulless to date" and "doesn't reflect the franchise's creativity in the slightest".

[135] Calum Marsh writing for The New York Times criticized Pratt's performance as "grating" and "unctuous" while describing the overall film as "bland, witless and flagrantly pandering".

She described most of the voice cast as "fun" with Black's Bowser being a standout, while noting that Pratt's performance was "not so bad as to be distracting, but not strong enough to be at all interesting either", which she said was an analogy for the film as a whole.

He further criticized the film for an "exceedingly straightforward narrative", characters lacking complexity, and Pratt's performance as Mario as being "blandly heroic", concluding that "This movie exists, and that's about as high as it aspires".

[167] Horvath, Jelenic and Fogel will return as co-directors and screenwriter respectively; Meledandri stated that Illumination's team was in the process of storyboarding and "developing set designs for new environments.

[170] In April 2023, Rogen expressed interest in Donkey Kong Country forming the basis of future works, stating it created "a lot of opportunity" for a spin-off film.