Could We Be Seeing More Nintendo Movies Soon?

Gamers of  a certain age (those that play Call of Duty) might not be familiar with a crazy time when Bob Hoskins was Mario and Dennis Hopper was a humanoid Bowser. If you think what I’m describing sounds like I’m under the influence, it’s a thing that actually happened when the Super Mario Bros. movie came out in 1993.

Time has been strangely kind to Nintendo’s biggest misstep as it’s received something of a cult following over the years. Nobody’s under the illusion that it’s the great movie ever made, but it has a very weird charm to it – maybe that’s what’s making the Japanese giants change their mind about stepping into the world of video game adaptations again.

Speaking to Fortune, Shigeru Miyamoto said: “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’s optimism could have been helped by the public’s warm reaction to the Legend of Zelda Netflix series that was only ever a rumour. Nintendo’s characters have appeared in cross-brand productions like Wreck-It Ralph in the past, but no standalone features have been made in years and years for any of their characters.

If there’s any video game company that could help the Tomatometer on video game adaptations creep back up again, it’s probably Nintendo.

Source: Coming Soon