Wahoo, There’s A ‘Super Mario Bros’ Movie In The Works

The greatest plumbers in the Mushroom Kingdom are coming to the big screen, with the folks behind Despicable Me and Minions working on an animated Super Mario Bros movie that could be in cinemas by 2022.

Illumination Entertainment founder Chris Meledandri told Variety this week that the project was in “priority development”, and that the company was working closely with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.

“It’s an ambitious task,” said Meledandri. “The challenge is taking things that are so thin in their original form and finding depth that doesn’t compromise what generations of fans love about Mario.”

This won’t be the first time someone turned Mario into a movie. A live action adaptation was released in 1993, and is widely considered one of the worst movies ever made — for very good reason.

But Meledandri said he saw the spectacular failure of the live action version as a positive.

“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.”

Or, at the very least, the bar has been set super low.

Meledandri also revealed that llumination is working on a reboot of the Shrek franchise. Props to him for keeping busy.