The Super Mario Galaxy Movie "is officially the year's highest-grossing film to date with $629 million at the global box office," [1]reports Variety — and it will likely earn over $1 billion. Project Hail Mary now becomes the year's second highest-grossing movie, with four-week ticket sales over $510, [2]notes The Hollywood Reporter :

> The two films have helped propel year-to-date revenue to $2.113 billion — the best showing for the first part of the year since before the pandemic in 2019 ($2.619 billion), according to Comscore. And revenue is running 25% ahead of the same corridor last year.

Some [3]context from ScreenRant :

> Even though The Super Mario Galaxy Movie reviews were largely negative, earning it a disappointing 43% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it a far superior score of 89% from audiences, making it Verified Hot on the platform's Popcornmeter. This indicates that the movie should continue to climb up the global box office chart thanks to strong word of mouth, even as it trails consistently behind the original 2023 movie in terms of commercial performance.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen called Project Hail Mary "an inspirational example.. We all thought that movie was really uplifting and inspiring." Before the Artemis astronauts launched their mission, Space.com points out "they were [4]treated to a viewing of Amazon MGM Studios' Project Hail Mary to bolster their spirits ahead of their monumental 10-day lunar voyage. "

> Marking the occasion and providing encouraging words to the three American astronauts and one Canadian astronaut, Ryan Gosling recorded a [5]brief encouraging video for the moon-bound foursome.

Today NPR took a [6]spoiler-filled look at the science in the film , asking: Would it be possible for humans to travel to a place as far away as the Tau Ceti star system?

> It's not possible right now, says Lisa Carnell, division director for NASA'S Biological and Physical Sciences Division. "I don't think we are fully prepared to send humans to Mars, let alone light years away," she says. Given the leaps in technology that humanity has made in just the past century, however, she didn't want to rule it out.... "I believe it's possible [one day]"...

>

> The hypothetical study of how humans and extraterrestrials might communicate is a real scientific field, called [7]xenolinguistics , that includes researchers from linguistics, animal communication, and anthropology. Martin Hilpert, a professor of linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, says the film "gets a lot of things right" for how such an encounter might occur, though it also employs a lot of "happy coincidences" too.



[1] https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/super-mario-galaxy-movie-highest-grossing-movie-project-hail-mary-surpasses-500-million-1236719782/

[2] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/super-mario-galaxy-box-office-milestones-1236561823/

[3] https://screenrant.com/the-super-mario-galaxy-movie-box-office-600-million-global-milestone/

[4] https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/the-artemis-2-astronauts-got-a-private-project-hail-mary-screening-before-launch-heres-their-verdict

[5] https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWmz-3xkWrP/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=499e5e0f-d000-49f3-b98b-8a3e3fc2bc50

[6] https://www.npr.org/2026/04/12/nx-s1-5782074/project-hail-mary-nasa-space-science

[7] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/xenolinguistics-the-study-of-alien-languages-helps-to-reveal-why-all-beings/