First draft of the Pixels movie script didn’t have Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong wasn’t always a shoe-in for the new movie Pixels. In an interview with Wired, director Chris Columbus stated that the character wasn’t included in the first draft of the script.
It was only after several months of meetings with Nintendo that the company signed off on having Donkey Kong featured in Pixels. Nintendo eventually felt that the film team would “treat Donkey Kong with respect and the proper gameplay”.
Columbus said:
“I was excited because the script had a Centipede sequence and a Pac-Man sequence, but what the first draft of the script did not have was Donkey Kong. After months and months of meeting with the board of Nintendo they agreed that we were going to treat Donkey Kong with respect and the proper gameplay, which was very important, and bringing Donkey Kong into the film was a slam-dunk for us.”
