Nintendo is ready to begin making movies again!
Isn’t it strange how the most iconic video game company has stayed out of the film industry for the past decade almost entirely? According to a recent interview with Fortune, “Super Mario Bros.” creator Shigeru Miyamoto made it sound like Nintendo may be finally opening up to the idea.
“As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo’s role as an entertainment company, we’re starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we’ll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future.”
With comic book movies being on top of the world right now, many think the next big thing might be video game movies. There was a huge amount of enthusiasm for the rumor of a Netflix produced live-action “Legend of Zelda” series but it turned out to not be true. Disney’s “Wreck-it Ralph” was a huge success and brought so many classic Nintendo characters in for cameos. And it’s true that the recent video game film “Pixels” was not well received but it doesn’t look like Nintendo is in any way slowing down. A new Nintendo themed land in Universal Theme Parks is still coming and seems to show Nintendo is staying to its promise of moving into a larger entertainment company.
This is interesting because back in the 90’s Nintendo tried branding itself with anything that would take them. There were multiple “Mario” animated series, a “Legend of Zelda” series and even “Captain N: The Game Master” which was basically a half hour commercial for Nintendo itself. Then the movie “Super Mario Bros.” was released in 1993. After the critical and financial failure of the film, Nintendo has not ventured into movies. Supposedly they still get asked as Shigeru Miyamoto explained, “We’ve had, over the years, a number of people who have come to us and said ‘Why don’t we make a movie together—or we make a movie and you make a game and we’ll release them at the same time?’.” Many are ready to explain why this is a bad idea and maybe it could lead to more bad films, but there is also potential and the possibility of something new, something amazing, and definitely something that should be given a chance.
Are you ready for Nintendo’s return to film?
This was first reported by Fortune.
View Comments (2)
I'm game. The old cartoons were goofy fun, but with the creative tools available to film makers today there's a lot of potential for some fun movies.
Sidenote: my daughter is bummed that the Zelda Netflix rumor turned out to be false.
cartoons have just gotten so much better now, I have no doubt you could do a fantastic Mario series now.