Illumination Joins Nintendo for Future Super Mario Movie

Super Mario and Illumination Entertainment

For those unfamiliar with Illumination’s work, they’re the animation studio responsible for making the Despicable Me series of films and their spinoff series, Minions. They’re also responsible for working on Secret Life of Pets and Sing.

The founder of Illumination, Chris Meledandri, is the one working with Nintendo on the production of the Super Mario Movie, slated to come out sometime during 2022. However, it seems that Nintendo is starting to rely more on the founder of Illumination, as they have stated that they’re going to start putting more effort into making more traditional media related to their properties.

This will all culminate in Chris Meledandri being someone that Nintendo can consult for future films with other Nintendo characters. While the Rep. Director of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa, made very minimal statements about Meledanri during the Q&A, Shigeru Miyamoto opened up more when giving his thoughts about working with the founder of the animation studio.

Shigeru Miyamoto had this to say at a Q&A panel. “Although this has no direct tie with his appointment as a director, I’ve been working with Chris for over five years now on the Super Mario movie. Through that relationship, I think he really came to understand the Nintendo point of view. I don’t think it’s easy for those overseas involved in media creation to understand Nintendo’s way of thinking, but Chris truly comprehends why Nintendo creates characters and visual content. We are working on mobile and visual content in order to expand our integrated hardware-software entertainment business globally. Working on mobile content reminded us again that while the Nintendo game systems may have reached some parts of the world, there are many places where they are not widespread…..we think that asking for Chris’s input, as an expert with many years of experience in Hollywood, will be of great help to us in the future.”

What do you think? Will this be a good thing or bad thing for Nintendo partnering with Chris Meledandri.