Nintendo and Sony Pictures may have closed a deal for the film rights to the "Super Mario Bros." game franchise, according to a Buzzfeed article based on now infamous Sony emails recently leaked to the press.
While Buzzfeed's piece includes a number of laudatory emails between producer Avi Arad and Sony studio chief Amy Pascale about closing the deal and plans for the franchise, Arad later denied that the deal has closed to Buzzfeed, stating via email his negotiations with Nintendo were "just the beginning."
In the emails, Pascale seems to suggest to Tom Rothman, who heads up TriStar Pictures, that the movie should be animated.
In another email, Sony Pictures Animation president of production Michelle Raimo Kouyate thanks Arad and says she can "think of 3-4 movies right out of the gate on this."
Nintendo has been hesitant to make movie deals for its properties since the awful 1993 live-action "Super Mario Bros." film that starred Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. Oddly enough, in the past year or so Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has been playing around with creating animated shorts based on the company's properties -- namely Pikmin, but not Mario so far.
In 2013, BuzzFeed News questioned Mario Bros. creator Miyamoto if Nintendo had any interest in working with Hollywood again.
"There have been a lot of cases where we've been approached by different people with lots of different ideas," Miyamoto said. "And I don't want to say that it's impossible, [but] I don't want you to get the impression that we are in the middle of making a movie or something...but we always have to take into account the fact that game entertainment and movie entertainment is quite different - one being passive, and one being active. Those don't always necessarily mix."
Personally, I think something is rotten in Denmark here. It doesn't make much sense that Sony (owners of the PlayStation brand) would actively pursue a Nintendo franchise (one of their biggest competitors in the video gaming market) for a feature film. That is a massive conflict of interests on several levels, but Arad is clearly talking with Nintendo about something. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what exactly that is.
