Nintendo

As you may well know, Nintendo is currently working alongside Minions studio Illumination to release a brand new Super Mario movie. Nintendo's very own Shigeru Miyamoto is acting as a producer on the film and in a recent Q+A shared by the company, he's explained that it was actually the Virtual Console that made him realise it was worth doing.

We've shared his statement on the topic below (with translation provided by Siliconera); he notes that seeing classic software be rereleased on new hardware over the years helped him to see the potential of bringing the Mario IP to a new medium:

Shigeru Miyamoto: "...Regarding IP development into movies, I was originally against Nintendo expanding into video-making, but am currently involved personally in using our company’s IP in film production; and the background behind this change is because Nintendo has re-released many games via Virtual Console. Our assets are our software, and even 30 years on, they are still active. However, unfortunately, when the original hardware compatible with the software is gone, we have no choice but to port it onto new hardware. After experiencing this process of bringing older software onto new hardware many times, I began to consider that our content business would be able to develop even further if we were able to combine our long-beloved software with that of video assets, and utilize them together for extended periods.

Basically, it’s not that ‘I want to make a Mario movie’, but that I began to consider that ‘we should bring more Nintendo content into the field of video-making’. With films, the amount of people who would contact our IP would widen, and increase the amount of people engaging with our IP. Then, we’d be able to further increase the spread of our media via video."

It was recently revealed that the film is "moving along smoothly", with a 2022 release date serving as the current target.

Here's hoping this one turns out to be better than the 1993 release. Let's face it, how can it not be?