Monday, May 16, 2016

Nintendo Dives Into The Animated Feature Pool

This "Hey everybody! Let's do a feature film!" fever gets caught (again) by a well-loved game company.

... Company president Tatsumi Kimishima announced today that Nintendo will attempt to create feature films starring its most iconic characters within five years. But fans of the live action Super Mario Bros. movie shouldn’t get their hopes up. ... Kimishima announced that the push toward movie adaptations will either be hand-drawn or computer animation.

The news arrives on the heels of a recent uptick in big-budget video game adaptations like Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed, which will attempt to turn the tide in the long list of terrible video game movie adaptations. But Tatsumi’s announcement seems to hint at Nintendo’s high-minded, yet small-scale approach

“We want to do as much as we can by ourselves,” Kimishima told The Asahi Shimbun, all but confirming the company want to go the in-house Marvel route and produce movies of its own properties. ...

You can see what's going on here. Nintendo sees that Marvel has made a fortune with its Intellectual Properties, that Warners is (finally!) doing well with its Lego franchise, and Illumination Entertainment has turned into a production powerhouse, coming out of nowhere to make a fortune with Despicable Me and the minions.

And you can almost hear the discussion in the Nintendo board room:

"The f*ck?! If big bucks can happen to a tiny company that a few years ago was a total nothingburger, why the hell not us?! A game company with a raft of characters known and loved around the wide world?"

Having been scalded in the live-action arena, Nintendo will focus on animation, which is probably a wise move.

2 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

They should've been on the ball 10 years ago (maybe more)!

Adam Martinez said...

Of course they announce this RIGHT after Ratchet and Clank flopped. Excellent timing.

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