Did Universal Just Confirm The Super Mario Bros Movie Franchise Expansion?

Coming into 2023, few people had ‘high hopes’ for the Super Mario Bros Movie. Why? Well, Chris Pratt was going to be Mario, and while the first trailer or two showed an incredible visual style, many weren’t sold on the vocal performances outside of Jack Black as Bowser. The story’s short runtime and questionable elements, which we could parse out from the trailers, didn’t help matters. And yet, by hook or by crook, or by Nintendo finding a way to convince millions of people to see the movie, the film not only did incredible, it got over a BILLION dollars at the global box office.

It now stands as one of the highest-grossing animation projects in history! That doesn’t just happen; thus, everyone has been expecting more things to come from this film. The irony is that this got “delayed” because of the writers and actors strike that JUST finished up. The actors made a new deal with the movie studios, so things can now start pushing on again. To that end, Universal had an interesting thing to say about the Super Mario Bros Movie franchise:

It’s true that Nintendo already “confirmed” a sequel, but they didn’t flat-out say it. But with Universal calling the film a “new franchise,” that makes it clear that they will be doing more with this and that we should be ready for whatever comes next. So the question is, what does come next?

Well, a direct sequel is the obvious answer. The world is already set up; they have the voice actors, and they even teased new arrivals like Yoshi, Rosalina, and more. There’s plenty of room to grow and see the other parts of the Mario universe.

Another option they have is to go the spinoff route. That might sound odd, given how well Mario’s movie did, but again, they have the characters set up. We saw the Donkey Kong family in full effect within the movie, and DK had a “unique relationship” with Mario that grew into one of respect. Given that, it makes sense that they would piggyback off of what they did with DK and continue on with his own story.

Some want to see Luigi get the spotlight and go full-on with Luigi’s Mansion in a film, which they also teased in the movie.

Universal and Nintendo have options; the only question is which will they do first and when will they come out.