The Super Mario Bros. Movie producer Chris Meledandri recently offered fans a positive update regarding the possibility of the animated blockbuster landing a sequel.
Meledandri hinted that he expects to collaborate with Nintendo on more than one Mario-centric big screen project in the future during an interview with Bloomberg. "I’m not allowed to talk about [a possible Super Mario Bros. Movie sequel] right now," he said. "Clearly I'll continue to work with [Nintendo] on the board level and we definitely hope to do more things together." Based on Nintendo's long-running Mario video game franchise, The Super Mario Bros. Movie premiered on April 5, 2023. It features Chris Pratt as the voice of Mario, with Charlie Day as his brother, Luigi, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach.
Chris Pratt touched on the subject of a Super Mario Bros. Movie sequel in a recent joint interview with Day, noting that The Super Mario Bros. Movie lays the groundwork for a follow-up installment. "[A]t the end of the film, there's a post-credit sequence that gives you a taste of what the sequel could be about," Pratt said. "And that gets me very, very excited. But there's been talk of Luigi's Mansion. That was a GameCube game. I think that would be great." He also expressed enthusiasm at a Mario Golf-themed sequel, although these comments were made largely in jest.
Super Mario Bros. Movie Stars Talk Dark Fan Theory
Pratt and Day also recently weighed in on a dark Super Mario fan theory, which posits that the video games' 1-Up mushrooms are a by-product of players' dead Mario avatars. Pratt quipped that the theory left him with a reduced appetite for mushrooms, while Day speculated on what it meant for burial customs in the Mario universe. Day also remarked on the macabre nature of the 1-Up mushroom hypothesis, labeling it too intense for children (including his own). "That's dark, man. Don't show that to my kid," he said.
While Nintendo isn't likely to confirm the 1-Up mushroom theory any time soon, an announcement regarding The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 seems almost inevitable. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is currently doing big business at the box office, racking up the biggest global opening weekend of any animated movie ever. As such, it's presumably only a matter of time before Nintendo and production partners Illumination and Universal Pictures greenlight a sequel.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is in cinemas now.
Source: Bloomberg