Nintendo Characters heading to Cinema?

In the 76th Annual General Meeting of Nintendo’s Shareholders, the topic of videos and movies came up. And both Tatsumi Kimishima, President of Nintendo and Senior Managing Director Shigeru Miyamoto, had some interesting things to say about it.

Nintendo has decided that broadening its use for its Intellectual Property would eventually include films and movies. As stated by Kimishima:

“It’s less a venture into the movie business, and more a question of how we can utilize the Nintendo IP in video content as part of the broader effort to put our IP to practical use.”

We won’t be seeing Mario on the Big Screen in the next three years — but there is a strong possibility that it will happen soon. Kimishima goes on to say that if anyone wishes to partner with them for films, they are open to discussion. Then he hands it over to Miyamoto to explain a little further:

“Video content is a really interesting area for us. Going forward, it is extremely important for Nintendo to move beyond the limits of game systems and make good use of its character resources in order for Nintendo not to be forgotten.”

This is a great step in the right direction for Nintendo, and a good move for the company — who has been under some scrutiny for the past few years now due to things like very poor YouTube policies, and their handling of the Allison Rapp debacle.

“We have talked about our expansion into video and other areas, but we are not saying anything official about the details.”

Miyamoto goes on to point out the smaller films they’ve tackled in recent years, like Pikmen’s short and Star Fox Zero, were all handled through outside studios by and Miyamoto himself. The problem they apparently have is the size of the company makes it difficult to focus on particular areas, like films. 

They also recently started to turn their characters into theme park attractions, and says this is just another step in expanding Nintendo products into other areas.

For what it’s worth, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we might just see that Ghibli-Zelda movie in the future yet.