The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is projected to have a massive box office opening, sparking speculation about Nintendo potentially combining its diverse franchises into a cinematic universe akin to Marvel's success. The inclusion of characters like Fox McCloud from Star Fox further fuels this possibility.
With the Super Mario Galaxy Movie on track to smash the box office , fans are wondering if Nintendo might bring together more characters from disparate franchises, says Bloomberg Opinion’s Gearoid Reidy.
Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results.TOKYO: Videogaming’s most iconic character is back. Yet even in his own sequel, Mario is in danger of being outshone. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is on track to be one of the biggest box-office openings of the year, with an estimated US$350 million haul worldwide expected in its first five days. That puts it in rare territory for an animated franchise, but should come as no surprise to anyone who watched the success of 2023’s movie. Like its sequel, it was panned by critics but went on to be the second-highest grossing flick that year. It’s not all down to the plumber. Gamers were stunned when Nintendo dropped news just days before it released that the film would also feature Fox McCloud, a vulpine hot-shot pilot from Star Fox – a long-running Nintendo series that’s completely unconnected to Mario. Everyone knows Nintendo has deep stores of intellectual property. And since it got into the movie business, fans have wondered if it would look to follow in the footsteps of Marvel and combine those different series into interconnected entries.This image released by Universal Pictures shows, from left, Luigi, voiced by Charlie Day, Mario, voiced by Chris Pratt, Yoshi, voiced by Donald Glover, and Princess Peach, voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy, in a scene from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. It’s a tempting target: What became known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the largest grossing franchise in history, with a combined haul of over US$30 billion. Star Fox appearing alongside Mario could be the first step to follow a template Nintendo already laid in gaming with Super Smash Bros, a fighting game that brings together characters from its disparate properties – pitching Pikachu against Luigi, Kirby versus the duck and dog from the 80s game Duck Hunt. Creator Shigeru Miyamoto has sought to pour cold water on the idea of a Smash Bros-style all-Nintendo blockbuster, and said that the idea of adding Fox came from Chris Meledandri, the founder of movie partner Illumination and a Nintendo external board member. But the firm has made no secret of plans to expand its cinematic ambitions, and said more cameos are possible. The live-action Zelda movie, the latest in what it has promised will be a slate of cinematic releases, will be out next year. The company has already set up Nintendo Pictures, a dedicated animation company for video content using its intellectual property. So far that has resulted only in a short based on the strategy video game Pikmin last year, but no doubt more is in store.For Nintendo, movies and videos themselves aren’t the point. Despite its global success, the first Mario film didn’t make a huge contribution to its bottom line. The segment capturing that revenue saw sales nearly double from a year earlier to 92.7 billion yen , but that’s just over 5 per cent of the company’s total. Far more important is how multimedia helps boost the visibility and popularity of the characters beyond gamers, and brings new users to its consoles. The firm credits the movie with boosting sales of older Mario titles that year by 30 per cent. And when Super Mario Bros Wonder launched a few months later, it became the fastest-selling title in the franchise and has more than 17 million units sold to date. Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal is among those who expect Nintendo to pull the same trick again and announce a new marquee Mario game in summer for release later this year. The question for Nintendo is whether it can elevate second-tier properties like Star Fox, which has been dormant for a decade. No one was better at doing this than Marvel, which turned lesser-known characters like Iron Man into beloved household names. But it seems to have lost the touch in recent years, with a series of flops centred on recast heroes. Disney has been forced to sheepishly go back to the well with this year’s Avengers: Doomsday, reintroducing Captain America star Chris Evans and casting Robert Downey Jr as the villain.While Disney sought to wring every last dollar out of Marvel, Nintendo plays a longer game. Its strategy paid off on Switch as once-minor franchises became multi-million sellers. But can it now use its movie business to elevate them into blockbusters? Results so far are mixed: A push to elevate Donkey Kong, a prominent character in the first Mario movie, hasn’t translated into stellar sales of last year’s Donkey Kong Bananza. Donkey Kong will likely continue to be a seller throughout the life of the Switch 2. With Donald Glover voicing Yoshi – and throwing out the first pitch at a recent Los Angeles Dodgers game in a crossover with baseball ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto – perhaps some of that magic will rub off on Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, which releases next month. But the next challenge for Nintendo is to drive up interest in the likes of Star Fox, Pikmin and F-Zero, while avoiding the fatigue that saw the world sour on superheroes. Mario might be a superstar. But as Marvel, or indeed the Dodgers, can attest to, you also need to have a deep bench. We know it's a hassle to switch browsers but we want your experience with CNA to be fast, secure and the best it can possibly be.
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