The Super Mario Bros. Movie has surpassed the $1 billion milestone at the global box office, and has become the 10th animated film to have ever achieved that height.
What makes it even mind-boggling, it took The Super Mario Bros. Movie only 26 days to cross $1 billion, surpassing Despicable Me 2 and Minions: The Rise of Gru.
Having won the box office worldwide, and while millions of people have watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie, many more didn't.
And apparently a user on Twitter came to rescue, when they uploaded the entirety of The Super Mario Bros. Movie to Twitter.
It didn't take long because more than 9 million people have watched the movie over the weekend, directly on Twitter.
This happened on one Friday.
At that time, the entirety of the 2023 computer-animated adventure film based on Nintendo's Mario video game franchise remained there on the platform, openly violating copyright laws, raking in huge view counts per minute.
Twitter only took it down on Sunday, which is three days later.
After taking down the video, Twitter also suspended the user from the platform.
The account in question that uploaded it, called "vids that go hard", had 1.1 million followers when it posted the entirety of The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
While piracy can happen, and that it's certainly common on social media platforms, this incident was possible solely because of Twitter.
The person uploaded the full length of the movie, in two parts, with the overall quality that is quite high.
What makes Twitter to blame here is that, the account vids that go hard was a Twitter Blue subscriber.
By paying to have that blue checkmark, vids that go hard also received some other perks, which also include the ability to upload 60 minute video per post
This makes it extremely easy for the user to upload the whole of The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Instead of having to break the film into dozens of uploads with heavily compromised quality, thanks to the Twitter Blue subscription, vids that go hard could upload the entirety of The Super Mario Bros. Movie in just two tweets, in 1080p Full HD quality.
It's worth noting that vids that go hard was the first that uploaded the entire The Super Mario Bros. Movie to Twitter, but the user isn't the last.
Following vids that go hard, a number of other Twitter users also uploaded the entire The Super Mario Bros. Movie to through their own accounts.
All of these Twitter users are Twitter Blue subscribers.
Despite DMCA copyright notices, and in a cat-and-mouse game, some of the uploads are still accessible.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie follows Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi as they are transported to an alternate world, caught in a battle between the Mushroom Kingdom and the Koopas.
The movie casts Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, and others, and is distributed by Universal.
The film was directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and written by Matthew Fogel.
While this kind of piracy obviously won't hurt the box office of the film which is already the first film to achieve $1 billion this 2023, but it’s more about the weirdness that Twitter has become after Elon Musk's acquisition.
The billionaire has fired many Twitter employee, and has extreme cost cutting in place.
At this time, around 50 movies have broken $1 billion in box office revenue, with the top 6 being Avengers movies, Avatar movies, a Star Wars movie, and Titanic which all hit $2 billion.