Christopher Cruz
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L to R: Yoshi (Donald Glover), Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) in Nintendo and Illumination’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic. Universal Pictures, Nintendo and Illumination Believe it or not, when The Super Mario Bros. Movie first came out back in 2023, there was some skepticism around whether it’d be a success. Thirty years after the historic flop of Nintendo’s initial live-action adaptation, die-hard fans were wary of being burned again. Following decades of abysmal video game movies, with only a handful of mediocre peaks, there was little to inspire confidence. The golden age of gaming adaptations hadn’t yet begun.
In hindsight, it might’ve seemed silly. Approaching its 40th anniversary, the Mario brand had rarely been stronger. Riding high on the colossal popularity of Nintendo Switch and huge releases like 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey, the stars were aligned for gaming’s golden goose to make a cinematic comeback. And did it ever. Alongside the first season of HBO’s The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie ushered in the current wave of adaptations that have recently conquered awards season and the box office alike, filling the void left by waning interest in the superhero genre post-Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Mario’s breakout movie ultimately racked up over $1 billion globally (a number that would take former rival Sonic three entries to gross), and opened the door for future adaptations like 2024’s A Minecraft Movie to pull in nearly seven figures.
But as Nintendo knows all too well, replicating success is never easy. Fortunately, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (out April 1), has a crucial advantage: The oversight of Mario creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Illumination CEO, Chris Meledandri, both of whom also produced the first film.
After introducing the world to the character in 1981’s Donkey Kong and subsequently redefining the entire medium with 1985’s Super Mario Bros., Miyamoto became the guiding light for all things Nintendo and remains deeply involved in the brand’s expansion into IRL initiatives like Universal theme parks and Kyoto’s Nintendo Museum. He’s more than just a producer; he’s the living, breathing bible for Mario’s history and tone, signing off on even the tiniest details. Working alongside him is Meledandri, founder of animation studio Illumination — the creative force behind Despicable Me, Minions, and The Secret Life of Pets — all kid-friendly fare that have accrued billions in ticket sales even without the star power of globally known entity like Mario.
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For their second feature, the duo have envisioned a new Mario movie that greatly expands on the scope of its predecessor. Pulling inspiration from the beloved 2007 Wii platformer Super Mario Galaxy, the follow-up bets big with a deep well of locations and Easter eggs that bank heavily on Nintendo nostalgia. On top of bringing back characters like Mario (Chris Pratt), Luigi (Charlie Day), and Bowser (Jack Black), The Super Mario Galaxy Movie introduces new faces like the dinosaur Yoshi (Donald Glover, whose dialogue is limited to variations of “Yoshi”) and Fox McCloud (Glen Powell), the star of the long dormant game franchise Star Fox (which, rumor has it, will be getting an update this year).
Ahead of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s Tokyo premiere, Rolling Stone spoke with Miyamoto and Meledandri about the pressure of repeating the first film’s success, the differences in producing a movie sequel versus a movie, and what Star Fox’s inclusion means for future Nintendo adaptations.
Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri SAMI DRASIN/Universal Pictures, Nintendo and Illumination This interview was conducted with the help of a translator, and has been edited for length and clarity.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time. How did you both react to the success to that level of success? Shigeru Miyamoto: You know, this was the first movie that we had really taken part in — and obviously we trust [Chris] and his team — but should anything fail, it ultimately becomes my responsibility. So honestly, I was a little bit nervous. But I also don’t like to feel pressure, and so I jokingly tell myself, “Well, I created Mario from scratch, and if something goes wrong and all of this doesn’t work out, we’ll just go back to zero.
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I was joking around, but with this movie it really felt like, because we had the success of the previous movie, it gave us more excitement.
Chris Meledandri: For me, the first stage of feeling proud about the first film was seeing Miyamoto-San’s reaction when we finally finished. [He] and I were up at Skywalker Sound up in Northern California working with the team on the sound mix. And when we left Skywalker, I could tell that Miyamoto-San felt really good about the movie. For me, that was the first important reaction to the film.
Working in cinema, we used to have more opportunity to impact culture with movies — and that opportunity has been shrinking. But one of the really special aspects of a movie that connects with audiences in the theater is the ability to have these kind of global reverberations, and there’s nothing more exciting than being able to experience that. So it’s something that I cherish as a unique opportunity of movies that play theatrically as opposed to playing in the home.
Having developed many iterations of Mario games, how did you approach creating a second installment in the movie franchise? I imagine those are two very different philosophies. Miyamoto: I’ve worked on a lot of action games, and so it’s really about building the relationship between the controller and the player, and how to build that experience so that it engages the player to think for themselves. “What should I do? What do I want to do?” I think that is the core and essence of fun. [The] interactivity of a game really contributes to the experience.
But when it comes to movies, it’s a little bit different in that it’s thinking about what the audience might want to see next. We have the opportunity to reach out to the audience and tell a story. It’s really about building scenes or building animations that really wow them. And I felt like there’s a big difference there. It was a very engaging experience for me.
Meledandri: There used to be this word in the industry, “ancillary.” The idea of ancillary was that you made a film, and the film was primary, and your energy went into the film. And everything else that involved the film was ancillary. And implicit in that was this idea that these other expressions were not as important as the original expression. But the audience doesn’t respond that way. If the audience responds to a game, a movie, then when they go and they seek out another experience with those characters, they don’t discount their judgement of it because, “Oh, the game was the primary, [but] this doesn’t have to be as good. It can be okay.” And that attitude in Hollywood reigned for many years; everything else was an afterthought.
When I watch Miyamoto-San work on the theme park, [there’s] nothing more important than a fan’s experience in the park. There’s nothing more important than a fan’s experience in the cinema. Whether it’s 20 seconds of a character reveal or the packaging on a toy, we strive for that expression to be coming from the same creative DNA that the movie springs from. We’re not always successful. [But] we try.
Rather than incrementally build out Mario’s world for the new film, you’ve opted to leap ahead into an entire galaxy. What was the thought process behind that increase in scope and worldbuilding? Miyamoto: When it comes to stars or planets, we had the idea of a grand, expansive world. [When] I’m creating games, [what’s] important is what the player is experiencing in these specific areas. What’s the distance between these areas? What are their experiences as they’re traversing the world ? And that’s something I brought into the movie as well. It’s not the fact that it’s grand and expansive — that’s important, but it’s really the idea of expanding the world that’s important.
When I’m looking at, say, the idea of space, it’s not just trying to recreate space as we may see it, or a common conception of what space might be, but really dropping in and infusing originality into the idea so that we can create a truly Mario-like space.
Meledandri: And a Mario-like space has different principles when it comes to gravity, for example, and experimenting with gravitational force within a movie gives you really cinematic opportunities within a sequence. So, the world itself provided opportunities for cinematic expression that excited us.
