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Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has explained one of the reasons that Nintendo has suddenly started going all-in on movies over the last few years.
This was originally published with an erroneous quote and has been updated to reflect and correct this.
Since the Bob Hoskins-led Super Mario Bros. film released in 1993, Nintendo seemingly swore off the prospect of letting movies based on its games happen (barring anime adaptations like the Japan-only Animal Crossing film and the various Pokemon movies). However, in the last few years it's been a complete 180, with The Super Mario Bros. Movie coming out in 2023 and being a massive success, a sequel to it releasing next year and a movie based on The Legend of Zelda coming in 2027 – not to mention chatter of Donkey Kong and Luigi's Mansion movies.
Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, and Pikmin (which recently had a new short film of its own) creator Shigeru Miyamoto was reported by Kyodo News to have said in response to this change in attitude from Nintendo, "Games eventually stop running when newer versions come out, but films remain forever." Which caused a heavy reaction on social media.
However, Bluesky User Erasu found that the quote was misquoted and was actually two separate quotes taken from an interview about the Nintendo Museum on Nintendo Dream Web.
So this is just legitimate ragebait. The context was specifically about expanding the Nintendo IPs and the Nintendo Museum where they can see and use old hardware. Here's the question and answer
— @erasu.bsky.social (@erasu.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T22:35:45.249Z
Miyamoto told Nintendo Dream "Ultimately what people remember are the IPs. Games become obsolete when new versions come out. But that's incredibly sad." He continued, "We started video production partly because of that sadness – seeing our creations become playable only on Virtual Console."
Miyamoto continues "There's a limit to what you can do if you make them playable in a museum, but videos will remain forever," saying that "I always say that my theme is 'creating reasons for people to choose Nintendo.'"
