Video game movies were already a hot trend, and then “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” came around and melted box office records.

Driving the news: Nintendo and Illumination’s animated feature brought in $377 million in global box office in its first five days of release, through Sunday, according to Comscore.

• The “Mario” debut broke the all-time record for an animated movie opening weekend, topping “Frozen 2,” and is now the biggest movie opening of the year, Axios’ Sara Fischer reports.

Between the lines: Last year’s two biggest video game movies, “Sonic The Hedgehog 2” and “Uncharted,” took more than two months to earn just over $400 million each worldwide.

• “Mario” will have achieved that in about a week.
• “Sonic” and “Uncharted” were among the top 15 box office earners for the year. Both were credited with proving that video game movies were finally a winning formula, after years of commercial and/or critical duds.

Numbers: Nintendo may profit more than $1 billion from the “Mario” movie, MST Financial senior analyst David Gibson tells Axios.

• Gibson estimates that the movie will earn $1.2 billion in global box office and an additional $2.3 billion from its digital release. After offsetting costs for making and marketing the movie and splitting its share with Illumination, Nintendo will wind up with about ¥150 billion ($1.1 billion), Gibson says.
• But he cautions that this is not quite a “Pokémon Go moment” for Nintendo, referring to Niantic’s 2016 mobile game that became a cultural and financial phenomenon. Mobile games generate money repeatedly, while the “Mario” movie is a one-off, at least for now. The film does end with a tease for a sequel, though none has been announced.

Other “Mario” movie notes:

• Composer Brian Tyler told Yahoo that his score for the movie references 130 Mario video games.
• One of Tyler’s tracks, which references multiple Donkey Kong songs, was not used in the actual movie, seemingly replaced by A-ha’s “Take on Me,” one of several pop songs used during action scenes. (A Twitter user who checked other unused parts of the soundtrack says they line up with other scenes that feature pop songs.)
• The movie is stuffed with Nintendo references, including a pizzeria full of homages to Nintendo boxing game Punch-Out, Luigi’s GameCube-inspired ringtone, and even a nod to a cherished Mario Kart shortcut.

I recently used an AI chatbot to help me interview winners of the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards.

Why it matters: Given the anxiety that generative AI might cost people jobs, I wanted to see how ready it was to take over mine.

• Interviewees picked a word, then ChatGPT wrote a question for them using their word.
• Nine interviews total; the first six have run in earlier newsletters (here and here); the final three are below.

Seventh developer(s): Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer and Hannah Kennedy, after winning Best Narrative for Pentiment

• Their word: “manuscript”
• The AI-generated question: “Pentiment centers around the discovery of a mysterious manuscript and the secrets it holds [Kennedy laughs. Sawyer interjects: ‘Suuuuure.’].” How did you approach integrating this narrative element into the gameplay mechanics, and were there any particular historical manuscripts or texts that inspired the story of the game?”
• Note: ChatGPT was just wrong with this one. Although Pentiment is about murder and scandal in a 16th century abbey and features various forms of writing, the game does not center around a mysterious manuscript.
• Sawyer’s answer, regarding some distinctly written notes that appear in Pentiment: “I was inspired by a historical story about a nun named Diemoth who had really distinctive handwriting. She was describing Bavaria in, actually, the 12th century. And so the idea of this mysterious writer who was writing these incredible notes and integrating that into the game, that kind of came from there.”

Eighth developer: John Romero, co-creator of Doom, after winning the Lifetime achievement award

• His word: “deathmatch”
• The AI-generated question: “As the creator of the classic first-person shooter game Doom, you were instrumental in popularizing deathmatch as a multiplayer game mode. Looking back on the legacy of Doom, what are your thoughts on the enduring appeal of deathmatch as a multiplayer experience, and how do you think it has influenced the design of first-person shooter games in the years since Doom's release?”
• Note: ChatGPT said incorrectly that Romero was the Doom creator rather than its co-creator.
• Romero’s answer: “I really like the way that Deathmatch has been just extrapolated on, with the latest version being battle royale. It's cool to see what people have done with it.… The design of deathmatch has gone through some iteration over the years, to maps that are super circular and vertical and not as windy.” He added that he’s excited to see more experiments with co-op deathmatches, including in Call of Duty Warzone.

Ninth developer: Leslee Sullivant, fresh off her debut hosting the GDC Awards

• Her word: “spicy”
• The AI-generated question: “As the host of the Game Developers Choice Awards, you have had the opportunity to witness some of the most exciting and groundbreaking moments in the gaming industry. What has been the spiciest or most memorable moment you've experienced during the awards show, and how do you think the gaming industry has evolved since you first began hosting the show?”
• Note: Another ChatGPT blunder. Its question implies that Sullivant had hosted the show before. She had not.
• Sullivant’s answer: “This is the first time I've ever done anything like [hosting this show]. So I think that in itself was very, very interesting to me. It's very scary, but I was like How often do you get this kind of opportunity? I have to break outside my own anxieties.” And regarding the industry's evolution: “I do think it has evolved since I've started in the industry almost 13 years ago. We still have a lot of work to do. But I love to see it. It's so amazing to see how things have changed over the past.”

I'm not worried about ChatGPT taking my job, now that I had it conduct several interviews for me.

• Four of its nine interview questions included factual errors.
• Not great, AI interviewer.

Yes, but: Most of its questions were decently structured, and even the incorrect ones elicited courteously earnest replies.

• My interviewees enjoyed reading each question off my laptop’s screen as the AI generated it in front of them.
• Good job establishing eye contact, ChatGPT!

The bottom line: The passable quality of most of ChatGPT's questions was a good reminder that, at least in my field, your work should be noticeably better than whatever a computer program can generate.

• In other words, the AI's questions were generic. Human interviewers should be able to do better.

🇩🇪 Gamers in Germany consume more energy drinks but less alcohol than the average citizen, according to a recent health study.

🇦🇷 Prisoners in Argentina are being taught video game development in the hopes of giving them employable skills after they serve out their sentences, Rest of the World reports.

💰 Resident Evil 4's remake now has microtransactions to help players unlock weapons faster, not the first time a publisher has added microtransactions to their game shortly after launch.

🤔 Longtime Halo developer Joseph Staten has left Microsoft after recently taking on a role at the company’s game publishing team.

😲 Tim Stamper, co-founder of British game studio Rare, has tweeted a brief glimpse of Project Dream, a canceled project that was meant to be a major exclusive Nintendo 64 game in the late '90s.

🏁 Mario Kart 64 players have found a new shortcut that will be nearly impossible to take again.

Nintendo has asked a court to subpoena the online community platform Discord to divulge the identity of user Julien#2743, who recently posted leaked images of the official art book for this May’s Switch mega-release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Why it matters: Nintendo isn’t just sending a message to leakers, but through court filings is showing how far it’ll go to squelch leaks.

• On Feb. 21, Nintendo’s senior corporate counsel for intellectual property emailed Discord about the leak of the art book on a Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Discord server.
• Eight minutes later, a Discord rep replied, saying they would begin taking the content down.
• Nearly 10 hours later, Nintendo asked for the whole server to be taken down, saying users kept exchanging copies of the leak. “Some members have been assigned the role of ‘The PDF Pirate,’ which identifies them as a source for PDF files of the infringing art book images,” a Nintendo official wrote, attaching screenshots of users offering to share the leaks over direct message.
• Discord’s legal team replied the next day saying it had “issued a warning to the server for the reported activity.”

The big picture: Game companies are vigilant about tracking down leaks, but Discord isn’t just where Zelda or Genshin Impact secrets proliferate.

• That recent Pentagon intelligence leak emerged through Discord, gaining traction when it appeared on a server dedicated to Minecraft, according to security experts.