Ahh yes, video game movies. In the late 80s-early 90s, Hollywood‘s brief obsession with taking cartridge-based games and adapting them for the big screen was truly something to behold.
Not necessarily known for being barnburners as far as quality goes, the genre spawned some truly, magnificently crapulent fare such as the ‘Street Fighter‘ or ‘Mortal Kombat‘ films.
Up there with the worst of the lot, though, was the extraordinarily ill-fated ‘Super Mario Bros‘ live-action flick, which became notorious for just how little it actually resembled the original game. The 1993 film was a box office bomb and was supremely weird and non-sensical, but over time it gathered a substantial cult following (it’s spectacularly batshit nuts and awful and great and everyone should watch it at least once).
Nevertheless, the whole debacle spooked Nintendo and threw them off the idea of using their characters in films completely.
But now it seems like the video game company is finally thinking about moving back to the silver screen.
Company president Tatsumi Kimishima hinted that Nintendo’s cast of iconic characters could soon make a reappearance in theatres soon, in a typically vague and tight-lipped interview with Japanese media outlet Asahi.
Kimishima hinted that film production would be an area the company was planning to invest in heavily, as the iconic brand moves to invest in new ways to generate revenue from its considerable intellectual property library.
“We aren’t looking to make money simply by directly licensing our characters, but we must invest heavily in new areas such as film production going forward.”
“That live-action film didn’t do particularly well at the box office. From now on we’d like to do things ourselves more than just license something.”
“We have a strong stable of IP, so we’d like to be able to do something like them. So we’ll keep that in mind as we work towards making this a reality.”
Kimishima hinted that the company is aware of the demand for “certain” characters in its IP roster, but that live-action filmmaking wouldn’t be likely. Rather, Nintendo has plans to handle film production in-house, drawing on experience gathered from working with partner companies on previous projects such as the Pokemon series of shows and movies.
Or, to put this in a highly speculative but dick-splittingly excited kinda way: HOLY SHIT THEY’RE THINKING ABOUT MAKING AN ANIMATED ‘ZELDA’ MOVIE, YOU GUYS.
The vague interview didn’t give many hints as far as any potential time frame is concerned, but Kimishima did mention that he’d prefer to see something within 5 years.
Awww. Shit. YES.
Source: Nintendo Everything.
