Super Mario Movie won’t be Nintendo’s only foray into animation, according to its president

Nintendo is keen to expand its animation efforts beyond the upcoming Super Mario movie, according to a recent interview.

Speaking to Fast Company, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said that “Animation, in general, is something that we are looking into, and not just this franchise”.

The franchise he’s referring to there is Mario, with the upcoming Super Mario movie set for release in 2022. The movie is being made by Illumination, the animation studio behind Despicable Me, with the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto serving as a producer on the project.

Article continues below

That’s quite the dream team, and that’s exactly what Nintendo is looking for when it commits to these projects, as Furukawa went on to say that he was keen to make sure that “people who deeply understand the characters and deeply understand the game are involved”.

Nintendo also wants to make sure that it doesn't step on the toes of its game developers, either by draining resources or siphoning ideas that would work well as games. “We must make sure that the results are true to the players’ experiences, and that they would never prevent Nintendo’s developers from making another unique game featuring the same characters.” explained Furukawa.

Nintendo has an enormous quantity of IP that it could dig into for more animated projects, and it’s easy to set your mind racing thinking of the possibilities. How about an epic Zelda anime where each season followed a different incarnation of Link?

In a quarterly report last year, Nintendo confirmed that it was working on multiple film and TV projects with other studios, though we don’t know exactly what form these projects could take. We’ve already seen how successful Nintendo franchises can be with live action movies thanks to the incredibly popular Detective Pikachu movie, so Nintendo could be looking into more live action content in the future too.

Animations and movies aren’t the only thing Nintendo is rumoured to be cooking up, so check out everything we know about the elusive Nintendo Switch Pro.

Ian Stokes is an experienced writer and journalist. You'll see his words on GamesRadar+ from time to time, and he works as Entertainment Editor at our sister site Space.com.