Nintendo's 1993 Mario movie was so embarrassing, it steered the company away from movie making for more than 20 years. This might be coming to an end now.
Speaking to Fortune, Nintendo’s Software Planning & Development (SPD) Division head, Shigeru Miyamoto, confirmed that his division will be overseeing the use of Nintendo's characters and merchandise in movies.
"We’ve had, over the years, a number of people who have come to us and said ‘Why don’t we make a movie together—or we make a movie and you make a game and we’ll release them at the same time?’," said Miyamoto. "Because games and movies seem like similar mediums, people’s natural expectation is we want to take our games and turn them into movies. … I’ve always felt video games, being an interactive medium, and movies, being a passive medium, mean the two are quite different."
But now Nintendo needs to broaden its focus, so Miyamoto is more open to the idea.
"As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo’s role as an entertainment company, we’re starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we’ll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future," he explained.
Nintendo has allowed Bowser to feature in Wreck-It Ralph in 2012 and Donkey Kong to appear in Adam Sandler’s Pixels this year. The former was widely praised while the later was widely criticized.
