Yeah, remember that sweet live action Super Mario Bros movie from the 90’s? That single movie drove Nintendo away from the idea of movies being made based off their video game characters. However, perhaps enough time has passed and Nintendo seems interested to get back into the game (sorry, I couldn’t help it).
A quote from video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto has caught the interest of many.
“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?’ Because games and movies seem like similar mediums, people’s natural expectation is we want to take our games and turn them into movies… I’ve always felt video games, being an interactive medium, and movies, being a passive medium, mean the two are quite different. 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.”
Miyamoto is the creator of such iconic video game franchises as Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Pikmin among others, so the idea that he might be interested in looking into movie adaptations of his work is a big deal.
Also, Nintendo did lend a few of it’s properties to the Adam Sandler horrible (didn’t watch but I’ve read…plus it’s pretty safe to assume) movie, Pixels. I think we can all just say that doesn’t count and let’s just sweep that one under the rug, yes?
