Mario is Finally Getting His Own Movie!

Filmgoers and video gamers alike were surprised by the news about an upcoming Super Mario movie from Minions studio Illumination—and Nintendo recently explained how the collaboration came to be. Although the project was rumored for some time, it was late in January when Nintendo finally confirmed the news to their investors, and to the public through a tweet.

Mario fans are sure to have purged the first attempt of a Super Mario Bros. movie out of their memories, with a 1993 live-action movie starring the late Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi, respectively. The failure of that bizarre feature, with a strange, underground dystopian Mushroom Kingdom being a far cry from the colorful, cartoony world of the video games, caused Nintendo to be protective of their intellectual property, disallowing other companies to make movies of their franchises since then. Now, Nintendo is ready to get back into the game (no pun intended), but with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto taking an intimate role in this upcoming animated project.