KYOTO, Japan — Executives at Nintendo are concerned that the planned sequel for The Super Mario Bros. Movie will prove too difficult for American and European theater-goers, sources close to the matter reported.
“As this is a direct continuation of the first movie, we wanted to reward those viewers who had become very good at watching it,” said Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario. “Those audience members have already mastered the film and need something more to keep them interested. We have already begun work on the sequel film, but if we release it in the U.S. at all, maybe we’ll just call it The Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Scenes.”
Producers at Illumination, Nintendo’s partner in making the animated film series, expressed concerns about the content of the proposed sequel.
“I saw the storyboards and just vomited,” said Chris Meledandri, CEO of Illumination. “I felt like I was being punished for not being a big enough Mario fan to appreciate the content on the screen. The rest of our creative team felt the same, and we agreed that this wasn’t the direction we wanted to go with the series. We’re just gonna take the script we had for the next Despicable Me movie and change the names.”
Hardcore Mario fans in America have expressed their displeasure with the plan to keep the intended sequel exclusive to Japan.
“It’s absolute bullshit. I’m gonna have to track down some shitty fan translation,” said Dan Matthews, who said that he had been unsuccessfully using Duolingo to learn Japanese. “Either that or I’ll have to wait 25 years for Nintendo to release it in the states. They’ll probably charge full price for it, too, and I’ll have no choice but to pay for it. It’s so anti-consumer.”
At press time, sources reported that Nintendo had reviewed Illumination’s script and was already making plans to include Minions in the Mario series going forward.
