Another property that’s recently joined Sony Pictures’ upcoming slate is Super Mario Bros., according to a stack of e-mails leaked as a result of this week’s hack on the studio. Unearthed by Buzzfeed, this latest gem reveals that Spider-Man producer Avi Arad has been in extended negotiations to acquire the rights to the Nintendo franchise.
The back-and-forth e-mails go into a great deal of detail, which the Buzzfeed article explores further. But the nitty gritty is this: a Super Mario Bros. movie or movies are on their way. In an October 2014 e-mail to Sony’s Amy Pascal, Arad explained to the studio co-chair that he was now “the proud father of the mario animated film.”
The deal had been in the works for sometime, with references to a “Nintendo guy” located in Tokyo, who’d he been “courting for a couple of years.” Two years to grease the wheels paid off, as Arad attached a photograph of himself with Nintendo CEO Saturo Iwawa and Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto celebrating the news with the caption, “Happy ceo, lets get together, it’s the mother load [sic].”
As for Pascal, at this point she deemed negotiations on the matter sorted and finalized. She then forwarded Arad’s message to TriStar chairman Tom Rothman, with the note “Avi closed Mario brothers [sic]. Animated.”
With this news, along with dirt on many, many other projects in the pipeline, those involved have attempted to put the kibosh on chatter. After Buzzfeed posted the story this morning, Arad told the site that negotiations hadn’t even begun on the Super Mario Bros. pic. Of course, he could be covering, or it could be the real deal.
What do you think, should Sony be making an animated Super Mario Bros. movie?