The Super Mario Bros. Movie is on a path towards hitting $1 billion at the global box office before it even opens in Nintendo’s home country of Japan. Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview with the Japanese press, which is translated by VGC, that the animated movie’s massive success surprised him, adding that the relatively low review scores from some professional critics might have helped generate additional buzz for the film.

“I did have a level of expectations that this movie would also do well [like the Super Nintendo World theme park], but I was very surprised that it went beyond what I could have imagined when it finally came out. You need some luck to achieve this level of success for a film. While many foreign critics have given the movie relatively low ratings, I think that also contributed to the movie’s notoriety and buzz.” said Miyamoto to the press, who is also a producer on the film.

On Rotten Tomatoes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie carries just a 59% rating and a 46 on GameSpot’s sister site Metacritic. However, scores from the audience on both sides are much higher. The film also scored a highly coveted A rating on CinemaScore, which indicates that audiences really like it.

Miyamoto also clarified in the interview that the writers came up with a different script for The Super Mario Bros. Movie in Japan, where it opens on April 28.

“Since we were creating this movie in both Japan and the United States, we thought we should make a Japanese version as well. When we decided to make this movie, we discussed creating a unique Japanese script from the beginning. Even if we were shown an English script, it would be hard to understand the subtle nuances.”

The Super Mario Bros. Movie stands at $875 million worldwide right now, with expectations that it will climb to $1 billion before it even finishes its run in theaters. It is the highest-grossing video game movie of all time, and is 2023’s biggest movie so far.

You can read our review on The Super Mario Bros. Movie here.