Mario, the mustachioed star plumber from Nintendo, will return to cinemas with new adventures in 2026, the company announced on Sunday, following the success of his first animated film, which took second place at the worldwide box office last year. , quoted by Agerpres.
According to a video published by Nintendo, the new feature film, which will feature the most famous characters of the Japanese video game giant, will be released on April 3, 2026 in the United States, with a global release that same month.
“We will soon start the animation phase”
The animated film “The Super Mario Bros. Movies”released in April 2023, grossed $1.36 billion globally, only surpassed by “Chin” at the box office in 2023.
“We will soon start the animation phase”, explained Meledandri, the founder of the American animation studio Illumination, who also co-produced the first film. He also stated that the new film will be, like the previous one, directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic.
“We will reveal more as soon as we have new information.”added Shigeru Miyamoto, lead creator at Nintendo.
Nintendo has announced a new Super Mario movie. PHOTO Nintendo of America video capture
The clip was released to mark the “Mario Day“, a holiday created by Nintendo based on the similarity between the spellings of the English abbreviation of the date March 10 – “MAR 10” – and the name of the character.
Why Nintendo has avoided Hollywood adaptations of franchises
For a long time, Nintendo avoided Hollywood adaptations of its franchises after the failure of the film “Super Mario Bros” from 1993, a failed dystopia where Mario plunges into an apocalyptic dimension populated by dinosaurs.
At that time, the company simply sold the names of its characters to Hollywood, without participating in the making of the film.
The success of the most recent film dedicated to the Mario character, to the making of which the Japanese giant also contributed, determined a review of this policy.
Last November, the Japanese company announced that it was also working on a live-action film based on the Zelda universe, another major franchise in its portfolio, which benefited from the release of a new video game last year. “Tears of the Kingdom” it sold more than 20 million copies.
The new Super Mario movie will be made by Wes Ball, the author of the trilogy Maze Runner and co-produced by Avi Arad, who collaborated on several films in the series “spiderman”. Shigeru Miyamoto will also collaborate, Nintendo also stated.
