If you haven’t heard, Illumination Entertainment has been making quite the noise in the movie world the last couple days. For those of you unfamiliar with the company, Illumination Entertainment is the studio that brought you hit animated movies like the Despicable Me franchise, the spin off movie Minions, The Secret Life of Pets, Sing, and releasing this week Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch. It was recently announced that the studio has plans to reboot the Shrek franchise as well as making a sequels to Minions, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing. So even though the studio has their hands full, they have decided that they are going to take on the task of making a Super Mario Bros. movie.

Most of the world is familiar with Nintendo’s Italian plumber Mario and his adventures that have been going on since he was first introduced as “Jump Man” in Donkey Kong in 1981. From then in 1983, Mario and his brother Luigi were introduced in their own game video game Mario Bros. In 1985 is when Mario exploded onto the video game scene in Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and the famous story line of saving Princess Toadstool from the evil Bowser began. Since then Mario has been credited as being in over 200 video games, his own TV series, theme parks, and one horribly made movie that many people would like to forget about.

Like I said before, in the almost 40 years that Mario has been around only one movie has been attempted, Super Mario Bros., in 1993. The film starred Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi. The movie was not well received but as with a lot of movies, has a small cult following for how bad it is. But since then no one has dared attempt to bring Mario to the big screen, until now.

Illumination Entertainment has decided that they want to take on the task of bringing Mario and his world to the big screen and are putting it in “Priority Development”. The man behind the task of bringing Mario to theaters is Illumination Entertainment CEO Chris Meledandri. Meledandri was quoted in saying about the movie,

“I like that this was not done well the first time,” he said. “I think that’s more exciting or more worthy than simply making another version of a film that was done incredibly well to begin with.”

But Melendandri thinks that this time around he may have figured out the right way to bring Mario to the big screen, this time involving his creators. Melendandri  thinks this time if they work closely with Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer and producer responsible for cooking up “Super Mario Bros.”, this will be able to create the type of feel needed to make a successful movie. He said,

“We are keeping him front and center in the creation of this film. I’ve rarely seen that happen with any adaptation where the original creative voice is being embraced like we’re embracing Miyamoto. There’s a history in Hollywood of people believing that they know better than the people responsible for a property. I’ve made that mistake before.”

It was said that the movie is in “priority development” and is definitely something that they want done. As far as a release date, it is being projected to be in theaters some time in 2022. In my opinion, if any movie studio is going to do Mario well and right, Illumination is the studio to do it. They have yet to strike out with one of their animated movies. Visually their movies are fantastic and I can totally imagine the way they use their animation in the world of Mario and his friends.

So what do you guys think? Do you want to see Mario and his universe brought to life on the big screen? Are you afraid the video game to movie curse will strike again? Let us know what you think in the comments below!