Chris Pratt’s ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Movie Gets A Poster

Nintendo tweeted out a first theatrical one-sheet for Universal and Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie with word that a teaser trailer will debut this Thursday during the Nintendo Direct event. The teaser will give consumers a first look at the Michael Jelenic/Aaron Horvath-directed animated feature. It will provide audiences, including presumably those who show up over the weekend for Sony’s Lyly Lyle Crocodile, their first listen at Chris Pratt’s Mario vocals. Yes, the Internet will mock, and bloggers will compile those tweets into an argument that his voice is controversial or problematic. Still, unless general audiences voice their displeasure, you can ignore the online chatter. Twitter might like to pretend that Chris Pratt is the least-popular Chris (compared to Evans, Pine, Hemsworth, etc.), but general audiences either don’t care or like him just fine.

In terms of actual box office and (relatively speaking) television ratings, he’s the most popular Chris, but that’s a conversation for a stand-alone post. At best Pratt voicing Mario will be an added value element for the core package. It’s a Super Mario Bros. cartoon from the studio that brought you Despicable Me and Sing. Illumination is a brand unto itself. Nintendo has been so gun-shy about making movies and shows from their games since the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. That Bob Hoskins-led bomb is just as bad today as when I saw it on opening weekend when I was 13. The mere notion of a big-budget, or at least I’m guessing the over/under $80 million that Illumination tends to spend, Mario Bros. action-comedy toon is an automatic event. Illumination plus Nintendo = fortune and glory.

The good news is that The Super Mario Bros. Movie, penned by Matthew Fogel (Minions: The Rise of Gru) and co-directed by the guys who co-created Teen Titans Go! won’t have to ‘save’ the video game movie or break any video game movie curse since the last four years of well-liked and/or well-received hits (Rampage, Tomb Raider, Detective Pikachu, The Angry Birds Movie 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, Uncharted and Sonic the Hedgehog 2) should put that notion to rest. Whether the movie, co-starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong, Jack Black as Bowser, Charlie Day as Luigi, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek and Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike, is any good is an open question. It now has the benefit of the doubt.

We’ll talk more on Thursday when the trailer drops and the Internet pretends that everyone else hates Chris Pratt and/or Pratt’s Mario voice. Maybe it is genuinely awful, to the point where non-online folks take issue with it (as was the case with the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer in late 2019). Otherwise, assuming the movie is any good (with the caveat that this is an animated film aimed at children), it has a halfway decent shot at becoming the first video game-based movie to cross $450 million (let alone $500 million) worldwide. The Super Mario Bros. movie essentially began the curse of the video game movie. It feels only fitting that, 30 years later, The Super Mario Bros. Movie will be the one to end it next Easter weekend (April 7, 2023).