'Super Mario' is year's first film to pass $1 billion globally

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" easily held its first-place position on North American movie screens this weekend while its accumulated global total pushed past the $1 billion mark, analysts said Sunday.

The video game-based film earned an estimated $40 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period in the United States and Canada for a domestic total so far of $490 million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported.

With overseas earnings now at $532 million, its accumulated global total has hit $1.02 billion.

That makes "Super Mario" — a joint project of Universal, Nintendo and Illumination studios —- the year's first film to pass the billion-dollar mark and only the 10th animation ever to do so, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Second place, for the second straight weekend, went to bloody horror film "Evil Dead Rise" from Warner Bros., at $12.2 million. Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland play sisters battling a demonic crew known as the Deadites.

In third was "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," a new comedy-drama from Gracie Films and Lionsgate Films, at $6.8 million. Analyst David A. Gross called that only "a fair opening" for a coming-of-age film, while adding that "reviews and audience scores are sensational."