By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Also known as Illumination Entertainment.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which cites an anonymous source because people aren't supposed to know about this, Nintendo and Universal are “close to an agreement” on Nintendo licensing the Super Mario Bros. IP to the guys who made Minions, Illumination Entertainment. This would follow Nintendo's licensing agreement for those Universal theme parks.
Now, keep in mind that two and three-quarters years ago, the Wall Street Journal also reported that Nintendo had agreed to have a live-action The Legend of Zelda series on Netflix. We never heard about that ever again.
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| Left: Front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Business & Finance section. (Story below-the-fold.) Right: Second page, continuation of the front-page story. (Still below-the-fold.) Features Cappy. |
That said, this makes sense with what was earlier reported a year ago about Nintendo being interested in going back to movies. “Full-fledged filmmaking” was the choice quote. Everything in that article has pretty much come true, according to this Wall Street Journal report, down to Creative Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto being name-dropped as someone who is working very closely with the negotiations and will be working closely as a movie producer.
Excellent.
One note: Just because the studio doing the movie is behind those rotten Minions, doesn't mean that every movie they will ever produce will be like that. Movie studios can be versatile. But, if they are going to be in that style, at least hopefully that crap stays in the theatre and not in the games. ...But if Illumination IS a crappy studio (why would Nintendo sign to work with them, then?), then Shigeru Miyamoto will have to micro-manage them even closer than he would a competent group. That means other people will do the actual gaming stuff, and that means more Super Mario Odyssey and less Paper Mario: Sticker Star.
Ludwig could have made this article substantially longer, but he doesn't want to inflate this article with filler content like the Wall Street Journal's authors did with their article. That article is mostly about how Hollywood has been trying to get videogame intellectual property deals and how those are a hot thing for them, even though Hollywood films based on games tend to suck.
Hollywood doesn't understand gaming in general, which is how Pixels was made.
This story was officially confirmed by Nintendo.
Can Illumination Entertainment produce a movie that tops the cult classic 1993 Super Mario Bros film? Who could possibly forget the iconic first lines:
ReplyDelete"A long long time ago, the Earth was ruled by dinosaurs. They were big, so not a lot of people went around hassling 'em. Actually, no people went around hassling 'em cuz there weren't any people yet. Just the first tiny mammals. Basically, life was good. Then something happened: a giant meteorite struck the Earth. Goodbye dinosaurs! But what if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteor created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continued to thrive and evolve into intelligent, vicious, and aggressive beings... just like us? And hey, what if they found a way back?"
...Yes, I think they can.
DeleteYou managed to spin this into something positive. I am impressed.
ReplyDeleteJust because it's a KoopaTV article, doesn't mean it'll be negative!
DeleteThat was... An interesting read. A little bit overboard but I laughed.
ReplyDeleteGood!
DeleteThat said, you could basically use that same comment for every article on this website.