Two years ago, Nintendo made waves when it announced that it was going to start making movies. One of the first film projects from Nintendo will be based on the company's flagship Super Mario franchise, and it's expected to release within the next few years. While the film's announcement may have already gotten the Nintendo faithful excited to see Mario return to the big screen, there's still a chance that the movie will be canceled.

This is according to Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself. During a recent investors call, Miyamoto explained that if the people working on the film can't come up with an interesting idea for Mario's animated feature film debut, then they will "call it quits."

"We've talked together and share the feeling that if we can't make something interesting we'll just call it quits. But we've already met a number of times to hash out the screenplay, our talks together are progressing, and I hope to make an announcement once we've ironed out some things like the schedule."

super mario bros nes nintendo

It's not surprising that Nintendo won't bring Super Mario back to the big screen if it isn't confident about the film's quality. After all, the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie was a box office bomb that released to universally negative reviews back in 1993. Since its release, Nintendo has yet to release another live-action film based on any of its video game franchises. If the Super Mario movie fails, it could potentially derail Nintendo's plans to create more film adaptations of its games.

To Nintendo's credit, it does seem to be making a serious effort to ensure that the upcoming Super Mario animated film is successful. Instead of handling production of the film itself, the Big N has reached out to Illumination Entertainment, the studio behind the award-winning and massively successful Despicable Me franchise, with Miyamoto serving as producer.

While the Super Mario movie may potentially be canned if it isn't up to the standards of Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto, the film does seem to have the tools for success. It will be interesting to see if it manages to live up to the hype, or if it ends up as yet another disappointing video game movie.

Source: Nintendo