Everyone's favorite mushroom-eating Italian plumber is slowly expanding his own franchise to Hollywood, as Nintendo, the license owner for Mario, hopes to announce an animated movie for the character.
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima is actually quite excited to state that the company is now close announcing their official partner studio for the animated movie. The name of the partner studio remains to be seen and is being kept a secret, but back in November last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that "Minions" and "Despicable Me" studio Illumination Entertainment nearly sealed the deal with Nintendo for the "Super Mario" movie.
Kimishima is optimistic that Nintendo will soon reach a deal with a 3D animation studio and that an animated Mario will follow shortly after. Nintendo has set expectations that it plans to have the animated movie premiere before the Tokyo Olympics takes place in the year 2020, where it is supposed to be released alongside the Super Nintendo Land theme park in Japan.
Nintendo will also be overseeing the creative process for the movie, with series creator Shigeru Miyamoto set to serve as a producer for the animated Mario movie. This could mean that Nintendo wants something more than to just license the franchise's expansion to the big screen and will probably be responsible for the story and plot as well as the character development in the film.
It can be recalled that this was not the first time Mario had a venture in the film industry. Back in 1993, a live-action "Super Mario Bros." movie was actually made, but it ultimately became a commercial and critical failure, with its main actor Bob Hoskins even claiming that he did not enjoy the role and that it was even a nightmare.
Hoskins even claimed that the movie was one of the worst projects he had. "The worst thing I ever did? 'Super Mario Brothers.' It was a f***in' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! F***in' nightmare. F***in' idiots," the actor shared.
Hopefully, this time, Mario is given more justice on the big screen.
