Grab your mushrooms and head for the nearest warp-pipe, ‘Mario’ is making his way back to the big screen. 25 years after the critical and box-office flop that was the original ‘Mario Bros’ movie, Nintendo has announced a partnership with Illumination Entertainment to produce a new ‘Mario’ movie with franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto on board to produce the film and with Universal handling the worldwide distribution. The news was released Thursday morning (Kyoto local time) in a press release from Nintendo, followed by another announcement of the news on Nintendo of America’s Twitter page.
No information has been released about any details of the film, no idea of who might be playing the titular character, what genre it is going to fall into, or even confirmation of whether it is going to be live-action or animated (though with the involvement of Illumination Entertainment that seems like a no-brainer, as they are known for making crowd-pleasing animated features like ‘Despicable Me,’ ‘Sing,’ and ‘The Secret Life of Pets.’) Fans had wondered whether Nintendo would ever give filmmaking another shot following the ‘Mario’ movie bomb in the 1990s where they felt embarrassed to see the mascot of their company used so poorly in a major motion picture. Clearly, this time around they are going to ensure the same results will not occur, which brings home the idea of perhaps this ‘Mario’ movie being the first truly successful (critically, domestically, and internationally) video-game movie, which would be fitting as the original ‘Mario’ movie was the inaugural film that laid the foundation for the idea that video-game movies do not work.
What do you think of the news of a new ‘Mario’ movie made with Illumination Entertainment? Do they seem the right studio for the task? What kind of story do you think they might tackle? Who would be a good fit to play the voice of Mario? Share your ideas in the comments below!
Source: THR
