When it comes right down to it, The Super Mario Bros Movie was one of the most important things to hit theaters in 2023. Not only did it become the second-highest-grossing animated film ever, but it was the No.2 box officing growing film last year, AND it was the highest profit-making title of 2023. Even before that last announcement was announced, Nintendo had already confirmed that The Super Mario Bros Movie 2 was in the works and would arrive in 2026. Fast forward to now, and the voice of this version of Mario, Chris Pratt, is teasing that the sequel will do even more and could set up the “grander universe” that is Nintendo.
This came via a chat with Screen Rant, where he noted:
“Oh, man! There’s so much to explore. There are decades worth of [games] to explore, not only with Mario and Peach and Donkey Kong and Luigi and Bowser and Yoshi; that was teased at the end. But it just gets me so excited. I was such a Nintendo head growing up, so just thinking about how everything from Legend of Zelda to the entire Nintendo cinematic universe could be created and what that could look like for all of these characters that I love? I mean, there’s really no limit. We could talk about it for hours.”
Obviously, Pratt is being a bit “over the top” with his answer, but he is correct that the Super Mario Bros Movie 2 could lead to a cavalcade of Nintendo animated products should they mimic the success of the first film. In fact, not long after the first movie came out, there were reports that characters like Donkey Kong and Luigi were already in talks to get spinoff movies based on their own Nintendo properties.
One of the ironies of what Pratt said is that The Legend of Zelda is already getting its own movie, but with a live-action spin instead of an animated one. That would mean that these movies likely don’t exist in the same “universe,” but it does highlight that Nintendo is wanting to continue growing its movie slate and entice people to come check out the characters they’ve made famous in new ways.
Given that it’s going to be a while until the next movie arrives, we’ll have to hold off on fully speculating what the “Nintendo Cinematic Universe” could look like, but with all the characters that could easily fit in the animated space, they definitely have options.
