We probably won’t see the new Super Mario Bros. movie until 2020

Remember the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie that it’s been reported the company will create with Despicable Me’s Illumination Entertainment?

Remember the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie that it’s been reported the company will create with Despicable Me’s Illumination Entertainment?

Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima has shared with Japanese publication Kyoto Shimbun that the movie probably won’t be ready until 2020. That’s because the company hasn’t yet revealed which company it will be pairing with to bring the movie to life. Kimishima states that if all goes well, we should be seeing the move in the next two years or so. 

If that’s the case, that should give whoever Nintendo trusts to bring a Mario movie to life plenty of time to avoid all the mistakes that awful live-action Super Mario Bros. movie in the ‘80s made. With Super Mario Odyssey out in the wild, there’s so much more to explore beyond the typical “Bowser is bad” narrative, like fleshing out some of the characters and lands we got a chance to meet in the game.

There’s also a whole world of Mario characters in general we don’t often hear enough about, which Illumination would likely do a good job with—so long as there’s not a whole lot of licensed music shoehorned into the product. 

The world has changed so much since the first attempt at bringing a movie based on Mario and friends to the silver screen, and while we see movie adaptations of games like Angry Birds failing on multiple levels, Mario is still at such a “pure” level that hopefully with Nintendo’s involvement there’s enough creative control left for the franchise not to be squandered.

Humor similar to that in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle might end up being the best way to go. Unfortunately, we won’t know how the movie might end up for a couple more years. Here’s to hoping it’s less The Emoji Movie and more, well, a decent product.