Nintendo is in the early stages of a plan to bring its familiar characters to the big screen through feature films, the company said in reports from over the weekend.
President Tatsumi Kimishima told the Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper that the company is in talks with a number of movie-production houses to create Nintendo-branded films within the next two or three years. A Nintendo spokesperson speaking to the Wall Street Journal confirmed that report, saying that Nintendo would use some funds from its recent sale of the Seattle Mariners baseball team to help finance the projects.
The reports suggest that Nintendo wants a more direct role in managing its movie ambitions this time around, after 1993's live action Super Mario Bros. movie was a critical and commercial flop (a series of animated Pokemon movies were managed by The Pokemon Company, which is only part-owned by Nintendo). "We will be providing the funds, and we’ll be included more [in the decision-making]" Nintendo spokesman Makoto Wakae told the Journal about the current plans.
While there are no details on what characters or genres may be represented in Nintendo's first new film project, Asahi Shimbun surmises it will "likely be a 3-D animated movie featuring such popular video game protagonists as Mario from the Super Mario franchise and Link from the Legend of Zelda series." Wakae tells the Journal that an official announcement of the film plans could come "in the not-so-distant future.”
Even before this weekend's announcement, Nintendo has been taking baby steps toward the world of less-interactive media. In late 2014, Nintendo debuted three animated shorts based on its flower-like Pikmin characters, directed by legendary game creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Nintendo characters like Donkey Kong and Bowser have also been licensed to appear in recent retro-game-themed movies like Wreck-it Ralph and Pixels.
Sony Pictures was also reportedly in a "five year chase" to lock down the film rights to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. and other properties, according to leaked e-mails from the film production company.Miyamoto publicly mulled a more formal entrance into the film business in an interview with Fortune last August. "As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo’s role as an entertainment company, we’re starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we’ll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future," he said at the time.
In early 2015, rumors surfaced that Netflix was developing a live-action series based on The Legend of Zelda, but Nintendo directly denied those reports a month later.
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