Nintendo, arguably the most famous video game company in the world, is finally starting to shoot feature films. Since the disastrous response to the live action Super Mario Bros. movie in 1993, the company has been very protective of its various video game characters. Apart from the animated pokemon movies, the video game publisher had been very careful about selling the rights to their iconic brands to movie studios. This seemed like a smart decision, as over many decades movie adaptations of popular video games such as Assassin’s Creed, hitmanand warcraft was failures with fans and critics.
But in the mid-2010s, around the time Marvel Studios had great success with the MCU and took over the creative direction of their characters, Nintendo started watching feature films. 2019 saw the release of Pokémon: Detective Pikachua live action pokemon film and the first full-length film based on a Nintendo property in 26 years. When Nintendo teamed up with Universal Studios to create a Mario theme for their theme parks, it was clear that the intent was to collaborate on movies.
Sure enough, Universal Pictures’ popular animation studio Illumination Entertainment is collaborating with Nintendo on a Super Mario Bros. movie. The film will feature a voice cast of all-star celebrities including Christ Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor Joy, Seth Rogen, Jack Black, Keegan Michael-Key and many more. The trailer was recently released online.
In addition, Nintendo also bought Dynamo Studios, a CGI animation company with the intention of making more movies and television properties based on Nintendo games. The company has an impressive catalog of exclusive titles that would make for great video games, and these are the eight we want to see as a movie.
Pikmin
Released in 2001, Pikmin tells the story of Captain Olimar who crashes on an alien planet and has 30 days to collect stranded parts of his ship before dying. He discovers living creatures of plant life called Pikmin who follow his leadership, helping him on the strange planet and taking on a wide variety of other aliens.
Pikmin has a bright colorful aesthetic that lends itself to an animated film, and the plot could essentially boil down to a kid-friendly version of The Martian on a planet that looks like a Hio Miyazawa movie. Pikman has a simple setup, but a world of movie potential.
Yoshi
Speaking of colorful characters, Yoshi has the potential to become the next big animated series for kids that can overtake the Minions if done right. A simple design, a wide variety of colors and a whole island of these cute prehistoric dinosaurs has a beautiful animated film written on it.
The film could follow a single Yoshi, or could feature Mario, as the two characters are often so closely linked. They could take another popular Nintendo character and bring it in line with Yoshi. Nintendo should know that when they decide to make a Yoshi movie, every kid will be asking for a Yoshi stuffed animal for those holidays.
Donkey Kong
When it comes to video games, Donkey Kong is an iconic name known all over the world. He and Mario both debuted in 1981 and since then the character has had his own profitable video game franchise.
Donkey Kong seems well on its way to getting a movie adaptation as Seth Rogen will voice the character in the upcoming Super Mario movie. Donkey Kong has its own great supporting cast of characters who would make great movie characters with their own villains, knowledge and plenty of great stories to draw from. Donkey Kong could also further link to the Mario franchise, further developing a connected Nintendo-shared universe of movies.
starfox
A sci-fi action-adventure film with a cast of anthropomorphic animals has a blockbuster hit. The pitch is actually zootopia meets Star Trek with a little bit Top Gun. The project would likely be a CGI movie and could feature some high-stakes space battles, colorful characters that audiences could become attached to, and also a very different type of blockbuster movie aesthetically, and has plenty of material to draw from for sequels. .
Kirby
Kirby is a character ideal for an animated film. Even audiences that haven’t played a video game probably recognize the pink balloon as an iconic character online through gifs and images. Kirby is a simple character that makes him incredibly marketable. He also has an impressive supporting cast such as the villain King Dee Dee and the sometimes hostile and sometimes ally Meta Knight who himself could be popular enough to direct his own movie. There’s plenty to work with from the Kirby franchise to make an entertaining movie.
metro
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metro follows an intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran across the galaxy. From the moment she premiered, Samus has been a popular character and fan favorite metro has delighted generations of fans. John Woo almost directed a feature film version of the game in the 2000s, and recently Captain Marvel star Brie Larson has expressed a desire to play Samus in a feature film. The franchise would lend itself to a big budget science fiction movie, one that could draw heavily on horror from outer space such as: Alien and Event Horizon. There is a lot of demand for a metro movie, one that Nintendo should cash in.
Legend of Zelda
The Mario franchise is certainly Nintendo’s most iconic franchise, but The Legend of Zelda is probably the highest-rated franchise Nintendo owns. The series has a huge mythology with different timelines, but all centered around three main characters: the hero Link, Princess Zelda and the villainous Ganon.
The series has a beautiful simplicity, from the beautiful world designs to the basic good versus evil story at its core that feels like a classic fairy tale. The Legend of Zelda can be translated as a live-action or animated film and still take the audience’s breath away. The question is there if The Legend of Zelda surpassed fan surveys for the most sought-after video game adaptation, so it’s probably a high priority for Nintendo.
Super Smash Bros.
In an age of movie universes, team-up movies and crossover movies, it seems both an inevitability and an impossibility that a Super Smash Bros. movie will be made. The legendary game series is a fighting game that attracts various Nintendo characters and even characters from other publishers such as Solid Snake, Bayonetta, Mega-Man, Pac-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog.
This is one of the most popular video game series in the world, and the odds of a movie starring Mario, Link, Samus, Fox, Pikachu, Kirby, Donkey Kong, and Yoshi seem like a $1 billion movie. How they’d pull this off if some series are live-action and others are animated is unclear, but there’s no denying that the announcement that Nintendo will be making their own movies is easily the first idea any fan thought of.