 Why did Nintendo and Illumination make the Super Mario Bros. movie? 30 years after the debut of the original live-action Mario movie, Nintendo's mascot is heading back to the big screen for an all-new animated feature. Considering just how poorly the first Mario movie was received, it's unsurprising that Nintendo has been hesitant to license its characters in other media ever since. So why make a new Mario movie? Why make it now? And why make it with Illumination, rather than any of the other many studios that have pitched to Nintendo? The answer to this question involves retro gaming, theme parks, Samurai Jack, Spider-Man, and Sonic the Hedge Dog. No, you heard that right. Sonic the Hedge Dog. First, why make a Mario movie at this specific moment in time anyway? According to Shigeru Miyamoto, this decision ultimately came out of conversations around porting retro games to new consoles, such as offering NES games on Nintendo Switch Online. He said, Our assets include our past software, and we can continue to leverage those assets even now 30 years after the original titles were released. Unfortunately, when the original hardware that supported this software is no longer available, that software must be ported to new hardware. As we continue to port our older games to newer hardware, we have come to think that if we have assets in the form of video content in addition to our beloved video game titles, and if we can leverage both of these assets over the long term, then I can see how our business content could. Miyamoto's point here is similar to one we made in our recent video on retro game piracy. Games have a very short shelf life compared to a lot of other media. A film doesn't age in the same way as a game, and is just as accessible a decade or two later as it was at the time of its initial release. Thus, Nintendo has begun exploring other media to create enduring representations of popular characters that will serve as default, iconic introductions to their properties. It's likely helped that Nintendo has received continued interest over the decades from movie studios who have been desperate to get their hands on Mario. In 2013, Miyamoto said in an interview with Buzzfeed, There have been a lot of cases where we've been approached by different people with lots of different ideas. So in that sense, I am interested in lots of ideas, but we always have to take into account the fact that game entertainment and movie entertainment is quite different, one being passive and one being active. Those don't always necessarily mix. Thanks to the Sony email hacks in 2014, we know a little about one of these interested parties in particular. Avi Arad, the producer best known for his contributions, for good and ill, to the Spider-Man movie franchise. In 2014, on his way to meet with Miyamoto and then Nintendo president Satoru Owata, Arad emailed the Hio Ups Sony to say, I am heading to Tokyo. I am going to try and bring back a little plumber. I guess we can all use our pipes cleaned. He later sent another email to say, I am the proud father of Mario, the animated film. While not finalized, the producers at Sony were fairly convinced that the deal would go ahead, with Sony animations Michelle Raimo Coyata sending Arad a congratulatory basket filled with Mario merchandise, and said, let's build a Mario empire. I can think of three to four movies right out of the gate on this. So huge! Studio Head Amy Pascal made the suggestion that an initial film could be directed by fan favourite, Gendi Tartakovsky, who had gone on to do Sony's Hotel Transylvania films, but is best known for his work on Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory, and the original Star Wars The Clone Wars cartoon. This deal, though, didn't go through. Instead, these conversations led Sony to acquire the rights to a different video game character, Sonic the Hedgehog. Or, as Sony Pictures Senior Vice President Dick Sano said in another leaked email, Dear all, Hannah Minghella just called to give me an early heads up that a very popular video game for years from Sega Game Maker, named Sonic the Hedgehog, will be made into a live-action film. As the subject of the email was also written, Sonic the Hedgehog, we can only conclude that this wasn't a typo, and that Sony Picture Vice President genuinely thinks that this is the character's name. Sony ultimately sold the Sonic rights to Paramount, which turns out to have been a pretty good deal for Paramount. It's unsurprising that Sony's attempts to secure the Mario rights fell flat. Miyamoto has been candid over the years about his reluctance to explore films. To investors, he said, Take video content development using Nintendo IP, for example. I wasn't in favour of the idea originally. My way of thinking changed, and it's not so much that I wanted to make a Mario movie, but that I felt Nintendo should have more video content. More people will have access to our IP with video content, and so the number of people who will come into contact with Nintendo IP will continue to grow in the future. It seems that part of the reason for changing his mind on the Mario movie was finding the right creative team to partner with, and this came about largely because of work on the Super Nintendo World theme parks. There has long been talk that Nintendo could make a movie because making a game is like making a movie, but they are completely different to me. Interactive experiences are completely different from non-interactive media, and to make a movie I want a film expert to do the work. Thinking that way, I have talked with all sorts of different movie directors and producers, and eventually I was introduced to Illumination via Universal Parks and Resorts, with whom we are developing theme park attractions. As a producer, Chris Melodandri, Illumination's CEO, is noted here for movies like Minions and Sing, but he is a veteran with a ton of experience, including the movie Ice Age and Stints at companies like 20th Century Fox Animation. When I talked with Chris, he said he had read a lot of interviews with me and felt we had a similar approach to creation. Talking about our similarities, we clicked, and decided maybe we should do some kind of collaboration. So the reason why this version of the Mario movie has gone ahead with this creative team at this studio at this time is because Shigeru Miyamoto finally found a studio head that he felt he clicked with creatively. The moral of the story then is that sometimes waiting for just the right partnership can lead to wonderful results.