Miyamoto on how the animated Mario movie with Illumination came to be, now working on the screenplay
During Nintendo’s financial results briefing, the company made the new animated Mario movie with Illumination official. Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri will be co-producing. At the Q&A portion of the briefing, Miyamoto shared more details on how the partnership came to be.
Miyamoto started out by saying that he’s been considering an animated movie for many years. However, in his view, creating games and movies aren’t really that similar.
Miyamoto thinks interactive and passive media are very different, so if he wanted to make a movie, he’d like to have a movie expert work on it. With that in mind, while meeting with many movie directors and producers, he was introduced to Illumination by Universal Parks & Resorts.
Illumination founder Chris Meledandri is a producer known for the likes of Minions and Sing, but has also has quite a bit of experience in general. When Miyamoto spoke with him, Meledandri revealed that he had read his interviews and said that the ways they create are similar. As Miyamoto discussed with him how they could be similar, the two ended up having a mutual understanding, and eventually said that they should do something together.
It’s been more than two years since talks started, but they’re now finally at a phase in which the movie could be announced. Meledandri is focused on making the film with a reasonable cost and deadline in order for it to be a success. While talking with Meledandri, Miyamoto has felt that if they couldn’t make something interesting, then it would be better to quit.
Once they have a more concrete schedule, they’d like to announce further details. Right now they’ve already had multiple meetings for the screenplay so the project has actually progressed very far.
