Nintendo and Illumination Team Up for a Super Mario Brothers Animated Feature

There is probably no more beloved property who has yet to successfully break out of video games than the Super Mario Brothers. From a TV show in the 80s now best remembered for blatantly dropping an F bomb on air to an absolutely abhorrent 1993 live action feature film, Mario and Luigi have been kicked around for so long, it's beginning to feel like they'll never successfully transition out of video games.

Enter Illumination Entertainment, the house the Minions built, to take a crack at the seminal franchise, this time in animated form. Nintendo announced yesterday on Twitter that they were partnering with Illumination to bring the swarthy Italian brothers to the big screen...

Nintendo and Illumination are partnering on a movie starring Mario, co-produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri! pic.twitter.com/wVRPLIzcGJ

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 1, 2018

As much as I love the Despicable Me and Minions movies, I think we need to temper our excitement with a reminder that there has literally never been a good non-video game property involving the Mario Brothers. I was saying the same thing back before Arkham Asylum was being released however, reminding everyone every chance I could that Batman had never fronted an even remotely fun or playable video game. Point is, I've been wrong before, but I don't see how you can make a good movie out of Mario Brothers. I guess that so long as Uwe Boll's not involved, it's got a shot.