Despite seeing Pixels, Nintendo is mulling a return to Hollywood
How bad was Super Mario Bros., Nintendo’s foray into the big screen starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper? It was so bad that it enjoys a 16 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it sent Nintendo bounding from Hollywood like it had just eaten a power-up mushroom. Now, decades later, Nintendo is reconsidering its moratorium on video game adaptations, according to Fortune.
Apparently Nintendo’s interest was piqued by the warm reception of Bowser’s cameo in Wreck-It Ralph, and possibly by the critical and commercial success of a movie that is unambiguously about video games. Unfortunately for Nintendo, they followed up that masterstroke of nostalgia by lending one of its biggest properties to Adam Sandler’s Pixels, a movie which also enjoys a 16 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Director Chris Columbus told Wired that it took “months and months of meeting with the board of Nintendo” to convince them that Donkey Kong would be treated respectfully in an Adam Sandler movie starring Kevin James as the President of the United States. (Although, to be fair, recent polling data does make that last bit of stunt casting seem less absurd.)