In November, we reported on a rumor that Nintendo was in talks with Universal about making an animated Super Mario movie with Illumination Entertainment (the studio behind Despicable Me and the Minions). Tonight, Nintendo officially announced on Twitter that the movie is indeed happening, with iconic Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto on board as a producer. On an interesting note, though, the tweet specifically says it’s “a movie starring Mario,” not “a Mario movie,” so it’s possible that this will be something totally disconnected from the proper Mario canon—which is absolutely the sort of weirdly protective thing Nintendo would do.
That tweet is the only information we have, but part of the initial rumor was that Nintendo was only planning to make one movie instead of testing everyone’s patience with an endless Mario saga or an entire Nintendo cinematic universe. That’s for the best, though, since the Super Smash Bros. games have established that Nintendo characters just try to beat each other up if you put more than one of them in the same room.
Whatever ends up happening here, we just hope that this movie finally throws in some kind of payoff to the ending tease from the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. movie.