Here’s some interesting news to kick-off your week with: bigwig company Sony has apparently landed itself the movie rights to the Super Mario Bros. franchise, according to to a series of emails that were discovered when Sony’s servers were recently infiltrated.
According to the leaked emails, it was suggested that Sony Pictures and Nintendo had apparently closed a deal for an animation feature of Super Mario Bros. . These series of emails bounced between producer Avi Arad and Sony’s studio chief Amy Pascale, as well as Shigeru Miyamoto himself and Sony Picture’s Tom Rothman, the head of the company’s subsidiary TriStar Pictures.
The tone of the emails suggest more so brainstorming of ideas rather than an actual seal of some sort of deal, a fact which Arad has confirmed since the initial report on the matter arose. According to him, the Super Mario Bros. deal has yet to be closed, saying that negotiations with Nintendo were “ just the beginning. ”
In the series of emails regarding the matter, attached filmmakers for the project weren’t indicated, but Pascal mentioned Genndy Tartakovsky as a possible suggestion. Later on, though, it was confirmed that the filmmaker “ is not involved ” with the project.
Tartakovsky , for those who don’t know, also directed 2012’s Hotel Transylvania , and is also the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory , Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars .
So, while it appears that Sony Pictures may have obtained the rights to produce a Super Mario Bros. feature, it seems that there’s still a long way to go until an official deal is made.
In the past, Nintendo has been rather stringent with its Super Mario Bros. franchise when it comes to movie adaptations since the infamous 1993 live action movie, but in recent months Miyamoto has toyed with the idea of producing animated short-moves involving Nintendo’s franchises.
We’ll bring you more news on this should further information reach our ears.
[ Source(s): BuzzFeed ]
[ Via: Polygon ]