Could Nintendo Take Their Franchises to Films Again?
Video game movies have a tenuous existence in Hollywood. Either they’re decent, or they’re really bad. On the latter side, if you ask what film is the worst video game movie ever, most fans (who’ll admit seeing it) will say the Super Mario Bros. movie. Having had such bad experiences with that film, and seeing how the rest of video game franchises don’t exact stack up in Hollywood, you’d think Nintendo would be fine staying away from movies based on their characters. But as Shigeru Miyamoto told Fortune, that may not be the case anymore.
“We’ve had, over the years, a number of people who have come to us and said ‘Why don’t we make a movie together—or we make a movie and you make a game and we’ll release them at the same time?'” Miyamoto said. “I’ve always felt video games, being an interactive medium, and movies, being a passive medium, mean the two are quite different.”
“As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo’s role as an entertainment company, we’re starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we’ll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future,” he added.
Now it’s unclear whether it would be live-action or animated versions of Nintendo franchises, but the prospects are enticing to say the least. Previously, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that a live-action TV series based on The Legend of Zelda franchise was in the works for Netflix. Nintendo later denied the report.