Mario Powers Up: How Nintendo Visionary Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination’s Chris Meledandri Plan to Super Smash Hollywood
variety.comShigeru Miyamoto picks disinterestedly at a breakfast burrito, he’s an island of calm in a swirl of chaos. His team of handlers — Nintendo executives from Japan and America — is frantically hovering around him like a protective ring of Koopa shells.
Miyamoto, who has granted only a handful of major interviews, is here to discuss “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” with Chris Meledandri, CEO of Illumination.
Both served as producers of the animated feature from Universal and Nintendo. “We’ve never seen this level of intensity from the audience in anticipation of a movie,” says Meledandri, whose “Despicable Me” series is the highest-grossing animated franchise in history.
The numbers back him up: 750 million people worldwide viewed the “Mario” trailers. Out April 5, the film stars Chris Pratt as the mustachioed plumber and marks Mario’s return to Hollywood, 30 years after the franchise’s live-action film adaptation bombed at the box office. (In an interview with Variety, the directors of that movie call it a “suffering fest” that left a “stain” on their careers — more on that later.) But before Miyamoto can discuss all that, his harried translator insists the questions he’ll be asked in a lighthearted video interview are impossible to answer.
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