The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has slipped from the top of the 2026 box office race, even after becoming the year’s highest-grossing film and crossing roughly $922 million worldwide by early May. In its seventh week in theaters, the movie is still on course to clear $1 billion by the end of its run, but prediction-market traders now think Marvel is more likely to finish the year in front.
Polymarket bettors now overwhelmingly favor one of two upcoming Marvel releases to overtake Mario by year-end, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day the runaway favorite at roughly 70% odds and Avengers: Doomsday second at around 12%. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has fallen to roughly 8% odds, a sharp reversal from earlier in the year when traders had made it the betting favorite to finish 2026 as the highest-grossing film.
The shift comes after a strong start that had seemed to set the sequel up for a long stay at the top. Released in early April, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie benefited from favorable timing and relatively little direct competition for much of its theatrical run. Its performance also built on the 2023 success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which made many viewers think the Mario franchise could support blockbuster-scale returns again.
That expectation was reinforced as the film climbed quickly in the spring. By early May, it had already passed roughly $922 million worldwide, an extraordinary figure for a movie still in its seventh week. The pace, though, has now slowed enough that the conversation has moved from how high Mario can go to whether anything left on the 2026 slate can pass it.
Marvel’s upcoming lineup is driving that change in sentiment. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has drawn hundreds of millions of views across platforms in its first 24 hours, a level of attention that suggests an opening push far larger than most rivals can match. Betting markets are treating that interest as real box-office power, and not just online noise.
The clearest reason traders are leaning away from Mario is scale. Spider-Man: No Way Home earned nearly $2 billion globally, and that history still shapes expectations around the character when a new film arrives with strong momentum. If Brand New Day comes close to that kind of turnout, the current odds may look cautious rather than bold.
For now, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie remains one of 2026’s biggest theatrical hits and is still headed for the billion-dollar mark. But the race it once seemed to control has tightened fast, and the betting market has turned the final stretch into a Marvel-versus-Mario contest the film no longer clearly leads.
