‘Super Mario Bros.’ Booting Up A New Big Screen Adventure

Movies based on video games have been notoriously horrible. In the last couple decades, there have been many valiant efforts to turn massively famous video games into brand new film franchises, but they all almost all failed to capture an audience. You can pretty much trace this curse back to one film, 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” That film was abysmal, to say the least, and pretty much killed the careers of many involved. Apparently, Nintendo hasn’t learned their lesson and wants to give their beloved Mario one more shot.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment have teamed up to bring a new “Super Mario Bros.” movie to the big screen. This time, they’re ditching all that horrible live-action garbage that plagued the last Mario film, instead going for a purely animated feature.

According to the WSJ report, this has been a long negotiation between the two companies, with Illumination parent company, Universal, helping seal the deal. They have agreed to produce one movie, “Super Mario Bros.,” but as is the case with any film franchise, if it’s successful, they will expand the deal to include more films.

This is definitely a better fit for Nintendo. Mario should have always been featured in an animated film, and not some horrorshow live-action mess. Illumination is a great partner, considering they are hot off the heels of a string of big hits, including “Sing,” “The Secret Life of Pets,” and of course, “Despicable Me.” Just please don’t put any Minions in the Mario game.

Nintendo is one of the last companies around with huge IP that hasn’t been made into films in recent years. They are notoriously stingy with the rights to their characters, rather than put out embarrassing films like they did in 1993. For fans of the company, the hope would be that “Super Mario Bros.” could lead to other franchises, like “The Legend of Zelda.”

The WSJ says that the upcoming animated ‘Mario’ is still in early development. So, don’t hold your breath for this film to come out anytime soon.