Why You Can’t Watch The 1993 ‘Super Mario Bros’ Movie Online, And Where You Can Watch It

It’s-a Mario time, now that the 2023 Super Mario Bros. Movie is in theaters. The movie may be targeted at children, but it’s a guarantee a large portion of the audience will be nostalgic millennials and Gen-Xers reliving their childhood. And that means it’s the perfect time to rewatch the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo.

After a wildly publicized disastrous shoot that led to walk-offs, drinking, and injuries on set, the ’93 Mario movie has become an infamous cult hit. It’s the kind of movie you want to watch on a Friday night while doing shots with your friends, drunkenly shouting at the screen. Now would be the perfect time for a streaming service to host the movie, or, at the very least, for a digital platform like Amazon Prime or Apple TV+ to sell it on video-on-demand. You’d pay $7 to relive your childhood, right?

Unfortunately, you can’t. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the 1993 Super Mario Bros. (also known as Super Mario Bros.: The Movie) is not available on any streaming or digital platforms.

Is the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie on Disney Plus?

No. Despite the fact that the movie was distributed by Buena Vista Pictures, which is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Pictures, the Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo Super Mario Bros. movie is not streaming on Disney+. Mamma mia!

Where to watch the Super Mario Bros movie from 1993:

The 1993 Super Mario Bros. film is not available anywhere on streaming, nor is it available to purchase on digital platforms. Sorry! The only way to watch the movie is to buy a DVD. Used DVDs of the 1993 Super Mario movie are available for as low as $4 on Amazon. Be careful when purchasing—some of the DVDs for sale require a region-free DVD player.

The reason you can’t buy a digital copy of the Super Mario Bros. movie might be because of the movie’s complicated history of legal rights. The movie’s producers, Roland Joffé and Jake Eberts, ran small production companies that managed to strike a deal with Nintendo in 1990 to get the rights to the movie but allowed Nintendo to keep the merchandise rights. The producers then struck a deal with Buena Vista Pictures, a now semi-retired branch of Disney. An infamously troubled shoot followed, and the movie was a critical and financial bomb. Disney released Super Mario Bros. on DVD in 2003 and then re-released it on DVD in the U.S. in 2010. That’s the movie’s recent U.S. home media release of the film—it never got a digital or Blu-Ray release, and it’s unclear why. Perhaps it’s because Universal struck a licensing deal with Nintendo in 2015, which may be preventing Disney from releasing the ’93 Mario movie on digital.

There is a Netflix landing page for the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, despite the fact that it is not available on the streaming service, and it is not listed to come to Netflix in April. This might be because the new Mario movie is being produced by Universal Pictures, and a deal between Universal and Netflix gives the streaming service access to live-action films from Universal Filmed Entertainment Group about four years after they open in theaters. (Which, in the case of the 2023 Mario film, would be in April 2027.) It’s possible this Netflix and Universal deal means that Universal is after the streaming rights of the ’93 Mario movie, too; though more likely Netflix created the page for search reasons. But this is all guess work!

If you’re dying to relive your childhood right now, you can peruse a significant number of clips, behind-the-scenes, and interviews from the movie on the Super Mario Bros. movie Archive YouTube Channel. Here’s a look at the 4K version of the trailer, if you’re curious: