Shigeru Miyamoto has dropped a surprise announcement hours ahead of the upcoming Nintendo Direct.
As reported by Nintendo Life, Miyamoto took control of the Japanese Nintendo Twitter account to announce that Illumination’s second Super Mario Bros. movie will be shown in Japan on April 24, 2026.
Earlier this year, during Mario Day (March 10, 2024), Nintendo announced that the second Super Mario Bros. movie will be released on April 4, 2026, in the US and the West.
The Super Mario Bros. movie, as you may well remember, was one of the biggest blockbusters of 2023. With a film gross of $ 1.36 billion, it hit multiple box office records. Those include being the second highest grossing film of 2023, the third highest grossing animated film, the highest grossing film made by animation studio Illumination, the 1st video game to film adaptation to hit $ 1 billion, the highest grossing film based on a video game, and the biggest worldwide opening weekend on an animated film.
In spite of the mixed critical reception, the Super Mario Bros. movie also earned some awards and nominations. It earned the MTV Millenial Award for Killer Series or Movie and the Movieguide award for Best Movie for Families.
Among the award giving bodies to nominate the Super Mario Bros. movie were the Saturn Awards, the Golden Globes, the Annies, the People’s Choice Awards, and the upcoming Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Shigeru Miyamoto himself was named alongside co-producer Chris Meledandri as nominee by the Producer’s Guild of America Awards, as Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures.
The timing of this announcement is certainly curious and likely is not a coincidence. We have yet to see anything coming out of the movie so far, even though it’s been a year since the first movie itself has released. There isn’t really too many secrets to hide if we’re talking about how characters like Mario, Peach, Bowser, etc will look and sound like in the sequel.
We have no insider source on this, but it’s likely that this announcement came in advance because Nintendo and Illumination have set aside a few minutes in this Direct to talk about the second Super Mario Bros. movie.
We will probably see Miyamoto and Meledandri on screen to make some general remarks about this sequel. We may or may not see some actual preview of what we’ll see in the film, and that could come in the form of some concept art or wireframe animation. Maybe we’ll get some kind of curveball that introduces King Wart or Shadow Queen as a new antagonist of this film. We can’t guarantee this, but don’t be surprised if we get something like this in a few hours.
