The staggering success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie has cracked open the door to Nintendo’s grand cinematic ambitions, and star Chris Pratt can’t contain his excitement. In a recent interview, the actor who voices the iconic plumber offered a tantalizing tease of what may lie ahead for the beloved gaming company’s roster of iconic characters and worlds on the big screen.
“Oh man, there’s so much to explore! There’s decades worth of movies to explore,” Pratt gushed when asked about the future of the newly-minted Super Mario Bros. film franchise as well as Nintendo’s other prized IPs like The Legend of Zelda.
“Not only with Mario and Peach and Donkey Kong and Luigi and Bowser and Yoshi…but just thinking about how everything from Legend of Zelda to the entire Nintendo cinematic universe could be created and what that could look like for all of these characters that I love? I mean, there’s really no limit.”
The Mario movie’s eye-popping $1.36 billion global box office haul has put the spotlight squarely on Nintendo as Hollywood’s next big shared universe playground. Pratt seems to relish the prospect, giddily musing about unexplored corners of the iconic Super Mario franchise that could make the leap to theaters.
“Think about the worlds. Think of like Super Mario, and then Super Mario Brothers, and then Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3: The Mario World.”
While the actor’s enthusiasm is undeniable, Nintendo is already making tangible strides to transform its hit games into cinematic attractions. Just weeks after Mario’s debut, the company announced development on a direct sequel has begun for an April 3, 2026 release.
“This time too, the staff at Illumination and Nintendo are working together,” the official statement read. “We’re thinking about broadening Mario’s world further, and it’ll have a bright and fun story.”
Beyond the Mushroom Kingdom, live-action adaptations are also actively in the works for The Legend of Zelda and a Detective Pikachu sequel based on the Pokemon spinoff game and 2019 film starring Ryan Reynolds. Zelda in particular holds immense potential as a fantasy epic on par with Marvel’s billion-dollar franchises.
Should Nintendo indeed forge an expansive interconnected universe blending its signature franchises, the gaming titan could very well dethrone reigning box office champs Marvel and Star Wars. With the iconic status and cross-generational fandom powering properties like Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon, the pieces are in place for a historic big screen ambition.
According to Pratt, making that ambitious dream a reality is limited only by the imagination: “We could talk about it for hours.”
