The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is out now and it’s already another blockbuster hit for Nintendo, like its predecessor. However, The Super Mario Bros. Movie wasn’t the first time the famous plumbers hit the big screen. 

A live-action Super Mario Bros. came out in 1993, starring John Leguizamo (John Wick, The Menu), Bob Hoskins (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Hook) and Dennis Hopper (Speed, Blue Velvet). The movie famously bombed at the box office, and Nintendo has reportedly refused to license the movie for streaming.  

Even with Nintendo making it difficult to watch the original live-action movie, there are still ways to see this disaster of a film. 

Where is the Super Mario Bros. (1993) movie streaming online?

As of right now, Super Mario Bros. isn’t available to stream online, at least via legal options. Prime Video, Paramount Plus, Hulu or Disney Plus don’t have the movie, and while Netflix does have a page for the movie, you can’t stream it. This could be a leftover page from when Netflix still mailed DVD copies of movies, or perhaps it’s a placeholder. 

How to buy the original Super Mario Bros. movie 

For those who desperately want this movie, there was a 30th anniversary Blu-ray released in 2023, the same year the new Super Mario Bros. Movie was released. It’s still available on Amazon and Walmart for purchase from third-party sellers. The DVD is also still available, as well as the VHS version, but used copies will cost almost $200. Those prices are for new copies, while used copies will cost much less. 

Can I watch the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie free?

While you won’t be able to stream it free, there is one way to potentially (and legally) get a copy of it at no cost: your local library. Many libraries have DVDs and Blu-ray discs to loan. A quick search of my library system turned up five copies across several branches (and three were actually loaned out!). If you’re fairly certain you’ll only watch this movie once, borrow it from the library.

Why is it so hard to stream the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie?

The Super Mario Bros. movie is, like many movies from the 1990s and earlier, marred by licensing issues. In 1990, Super Mario Bros. 3 came out for the NES and became a real moneymaker for Nintendo, which caught the attention of Hollywood. The movie’s producers, Roland Joffé and Jake Eberts, struck a deal with Nintendo for a Super Mario Bros. movie for $2 million. Nintendo was interested in licensing its characters and agreed to be hands-off with the movie. 

With the license, Joffé and Eberts made a deal with Hollywood Pictures and Buena Vista, two now-defunct studios owned by Disney that handled film production and distribution. They released laserdisc, VHS and DVD copies of the movie over the years. Both Disney-owned companies went extinct in the late ’00s, and as Nintendo holds the rights to the Mario franchise, any decisions about the movie would likely be theirs.

Nintendo signed a licensing deal with Universal in 2015 to add its characters to Universal’s theme parks as well as movies. It’s likely that because of that deal with Universal, Nintendo has decided not to license the 1993 movie to a streaming platform, in part to not confuse people with the live-action film and the 2023 animated feature from Illumination and to bury the film that was such an embarrassment for the game company. 

Why did the Super Mario Bros. movie flop? 

The failure of Super Mario Bros. wasn’t well-documented when the movie came out. But over the years, especially since the release of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, more members of the film’s production have detailed what went wrong with the film that had an estimated $48 million budget, but only made $38 million at the box office. For those who have seen the movie and are familiar with the Super Mario Bros. franchise, it was easy to tell there were production issues as the film had little in common with the game series. 

Instead of the colorful setting of the Mushroom Kingdom in the Super Mario Bros. game, the film introduced a cyberpunk world called Dinohattan, where dinosaurs on Earth traveled to 66 million years ago. It was in this alternate dimension that dinosaurs continued to evolve into a humanoid form. Mario and Luigi (Leguizamo and Hoskins) were two plumbers who met Daisy, an NYU student who didn’t know she was a princess in this alternate dimension. President “King” Koopa (Hopper) had his underlings kidnap her and bring her back to Dinohattan, and it’s up to the Mario brothers to save her. 

The whole film experience was like a fever dream for kids at the time, and the issues started before anything was filmed. Just weeks before shooting started, the script was still undergoing rewrites as it was clear that the writers didn’t have much knowledge about the game franchise, and they weren’t the only ones. 

The husband-and-wife directors, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, were also brought onto the production right before filming and weren’t familiar with the game or its characters. There was an attempt to create a “dark” story for the game, as the directors didn’t want to make a movie only for kids, they said in a 2023 Wired article. This caused turmoil among the producers and studio executives, although Nintendo didn’t chime in other than visiting the set during production. 

The directors continued filming the movie, shooting scenes rewritten the day before. Hoskins and Leguizamo recognized how disastrous the movie was while filming and would take shots between scenes. Hoskins, who died in 2014, called the experience a “nightmare.”

When Super Mario Bros. opened on May 28, 1993, it earned $8.5 million that Memorial Day weekend. It was panned by movie critics at the time and still has a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.