It’s almost unreal that we’ve had to wait nearly thirty years for a new Super Mario Bros. movie since the live action effort absolutely cratered at the box office, but the wait is nearly over. That’s right, the CGI animated extravaganza Super Mario Bros. is hitting Australian cinemas on March 30, 2023.
And that’s about all we know about it—plot details are being kept under wraps but will doubtless involve a heroic plumber rescuing a princess from a tower, with help from his brother. There will be jumping, and possibly some mushroom-assisted growing and shrinking.
We do know the cast, though. Chris Pratt is voicing Mario, a development the internet took with sanguine calm. Also on board are Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, Jack Black as Bowser (that’s pretty exciting, tbh), Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong and Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike.
Nintendo, who have been pretty protective of the Mario brand since the 1993 big screen iteration, partnered up with animation house Illumination Entertainment, who gave us the Despicable Me/Minions and Sing Franchises on this one, and animation veterans Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, who cobbled together Teen Titans Go!, are on directing duties, which bodes well—Teen Titans Go! rules hard.
Video game adaptations have historically been, well, bloody terrible, but recent successes like Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog have marked an uptick in general quality, if you actually acclaim. Will the new Mario movie join the hallowed ranks of those mildly appreciated non-masterpieces? At the very least it won’t bear much resemblance to the live action film, a truly bizarre film from the creators of Max Headroom, and a project that stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo hated so much they took to day-drinking to cope with it.
