Nintendo proposes Minions director as new outside director of the company

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo has nominated Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri to be the company’s new outside director after his work on the upcoming Super Mario movie.

Revealed in Nintendo’s latest financial report, in a section detailing ‘change of director’, the company have put forward Meledandri as “anticipated new Director” noting that “the change will be effective upon approval at the 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to be held on June 29, 2021.”

Meledandri’s new role, if accepted, will mean that he is a member of Nintendo’s board of directors and will provide outside input into the company’s future projects. Considering that Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was recently quoted as saying that the Super Mario movie isn’t the company’s only plan to shift into other media, it would make sense to have the CEO of Illumination - the animation powerhouse behind the likes of Despicable Me, Minions, and The Secret Life of Pets - on board during Nintendo’s foray into animation.

Nintendo’s president Furukawa has also recently stated that Nintendo will be focusing on creating more original games from now on and that the company would need to continue to innovate in order to survive in the now competitive entertainment market - noting that “with the expansion of time spent at home, the range of ‘entertainment’ as an object of consumption is expanding.” It seems that Nintendo has a lot of big things in the works for fans over the coming years.

For more about the inner workings at Nintendo, find out why Shigeru Miyamoto describes Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters as “a bit boring”

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.