January 31, 2018, had Nintendo announce that they would be partnering with Illumination Entertainment to create an animated film based off of Mario. Back in 1993, the Mario games became a hit and a live-action movie soon followed. It was not well-received and became the first of many bad movies based on video games.

The producers of the 1993 live-action film did not work with Nintendo during the production stages. This inclusion of creator input puts itself as one of the differences between this Illumination-Nintendo produced venture.

It’s an ambitious task [. . .] The challenge is taking things that are so thin in their original form and finding depth that doesn’t compromise what generations of fans love about Mario, but also feels organic to the iconography and can support a three-act structure.

The unnamed film will have not only the CEO of Illumination, Chris Meledandri but, also Shigeru Miyamoto as producers.

Meledandri has his experience behind other Illumination projects such as Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets, and Sing. He has also worked other films like Ice Age and Robots. Meanwhile, Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of Mario and much of the famous Nintendo IPs.

The film has now been put into “priority development”. This, in turn, means the film could be put into theaters in 2022. The most difficult part of this entire development will be its original works being rather straightforward and lacking any form of depth that they could use.