Back in February, Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview with Fortune that Nintendo isn’t opposed to the idea of making films based on their properties. Well Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima, in an interview with Japan’s Asahi Shimbum, confirmed that the game company is investing heavily in “new areas such as film production.”
NeoGAF user GSR translated the full interview, where Kimishima discusses Nintendo’s past and future with movie production. Kimishima discusses how Nintendo “…aren’t looking to make money simply by directly licensing our characters…We’re currently talking to a number of partners , and I think we’ll be able to finalize something in the not too distant future.” Kimishima didn’t specify whether Nintendo would work with other Hollywood studios or if they would try to develop films in-house, however Kimishima did reply “We’d like to work together with partners who can be successful on a global scale.”
Kimishima also answered some questions concerning Nintendo’s biggest mistake with movies, and that’s the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie in 1993. Kimishima said on the movie “That live-action film didn’t do particularly well in the box-office. From now on we’d like to do things ourselves more than licensing something.” He also said that the company wouldn’t really try live action and maybe focus more on animation, but nothing is completely confirmed so far. It’s a good thing that Nintendo wants to make sure their licenses are represented appropriately, because that Super Mario Bros. Movie was a cross between Mad Max and a Chuck E. Cheese done in the worst way possible.
Nintendo has dabbled in movies other than Super Mario Bros. though. There was an Japan only Mario Bros. anime, an Animal Crossing animated movie, and even Professor Layton movie. Let’s not also forget the continuous Pokemon movies that seem to come out every year. It’s not too crazy to imagine Nintendo developing movies, the question is what IP will they make a movie out of?
Kimishima also explained in the interview a little bit about the NX and the company’s future. When asked about the NX possibly replacing the Wii U, Kimishima stated “the NX is neither a successor to the Wii U nor to the 3DS. It’s a new way of playing games, which I think will have a larger impact than the Wii U, but I don’t feel it’s a pure replacement.”
Is it me or is there a lot of video game movie stuff going on right now? This summer we have had Rachet and Clank, Warcraft, Angry Birds, and we’ve just gotten a trailer for Assassin’s Creed coming this winter. Ubisoft has produced Assassin’s Creed under their Ubisoft Motion Picture Division, so it will be interesting how video game company handles a movie based on their own property. There was also the news that SEGA was making movies based on their old arcade games like Shinobi.