Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment finally gave us our first glimpse at the animated Mario movie, which is officially titled The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The trailer reveal came during New York Comic Con and got a special Nintendo Direct of its own.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie Nintendo Direct kicks off with an introduction from Shigeru Miyamoto, Chris Meledandri, Chris Pratt, and Jack Black, who confirmed that the animation will be complete next week, although there are still other things to do, and hyped up the trailer. The trailer itself begins with Bowser attacking a city of Penguins before cutting to Mario finding himself in the Mushroom Kingdom and going on an adventure with Toad. We even see a little bit of Luigi at the end.
Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment — the Universal Pictures animation studio known for creating Despicable Me, Sing, and The Secret Life of Pets — first announced a movie based on the iconic Super Mario Bros. video game series in 2018. While series creator Shigeru Miyamoto was a producer on the film from the start and Nintendo acquired a film studio during this movie’s production, the announcement that really turned heads was the September 2021 Nintendo Direct, where its shocking all-star cast was revealed.
During its segment in that Direct, we learned that Chris Pratt is Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy is Princess Peach, Charlie Day is Luigi, Keegan-Michael Key is Toad, Seth Rogan is Donkey Kong, Fred Armisen is Cranky Kong, Kevin Michael Richardson is Kamek, Sebastian Maniscalco is Foreman Spike, and Jack Black is Bowser. They all felt like odd choices at the time of the announcement, and from this trailer, we learned what Kamek, Bowser, Mario, Toad, and Luigi will all sound like.
While The Super Mario Bros. Movie was originally going to come out this year, you can now expect the animated feature to hit theaters on April 7, 2023 in the United States and April 28, 2023 in Japan.
