Movie theaters have struggled to recover from the pandemic, in part, because the once-reliable family audience has wandered. Last year, family-oriented films — largely animation — represented 17 percent of worldwide ticket sales, about half of what they were in 2019.Over the weekend, however, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal Pictures turned out families on a jaw-dropping scale, generating an estimated $146.4 million in ticket sales at theaters in the United States and Canada, for a total of $204.6 million since arriving on Wednesday. The PG-rated movie cost Illumination Entertainment and Nintendo roughly $100 million to make.“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” about Brooklyn plumbers who get zapped into a magical and treacherous realm known as the Mushroom Kingdom, collected an additional $173 million overseas — a result that one Hollywood trade news site called “plumb insane,” noting that it was on a par with results for Universal mega-franchises like “ …
