The official release date for Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. animated movie, MARIO, has been announced, promising a December 2022 arrival. For many gamers, the highly popular franchise has been a part of their lives since childhood. The first game in the series arrived in 1983, and since then, Mario and Luigi have been popping up in one form or another to delight gamers everywhere. The animated film will mark the first theatrically released Mario Bros. adaptation outside of Japan since 1993’s live-action effort.

Though released during a time when Nintendo and the Mario Bros. were indeed still very relevant, the film was nothing short of a disaster. As a matter of fact, Super Mario Bros. was so unpleasant for the late Bob Hoskins (who played Mario) that he is known to have openly bad-mouthed both the production itself as well as husband and wife directing duo, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, referring to them as “F*ckin’ idiots.” With a history like that, it’s understandable why Nintendo would want to take its time in re-introducing the characters to cinema audiences. After all, video games have a historically poor track record when it comes to live-action adaptations. However, when it comes to adapting popular games into animated features, hits like Angry Birds have proven that sometimes the formula works well.

Perhaps it’s the success that animated features have consistently been able to find at the box office (whether video game adaptations or not) that has encouraged Nintendo to release their latest Super Mario Bros. adaptation as an animated film. Having recently revealed the cast in the upcoming feature, Nintendo of America took their official Twitter account in order to also shed some light on the film's release date. Clearly aiming to take advantage of the busy Christmas movie season, MARIO will officially release on December 21st, 2022. Check out the announcement below:


There isn’t much known as to what sort of plot that the film will have at the moment, but judging by the lengthy list of characters included, there’s a very good chance the film will weave together much of Mario and Luigi’s past and present. It’s also somewhat surprising to learn of Chris Pratt’s Mario casting, as the actor has left audiences divided in recent years, despite being part of blockbuster franchises such as Jurassic World and The LEGO Movie. Yet, regardless of casting choices, Nintendo’s devotion to the Super Mario franchise is taken quite seriously, especially now that Super Nintendo World is open and running in Japan.

It often seems that animated films are as good as gold at the box office, and while this isn’t a guarantee that MARIO will be a hit, it certainly feels more advantageous than a live-action adaptation would. Nintendo’s strength this time around in adapting the franchise is that so much time has passed since the last big screen outing for the characters that audiences are more than ready for something new. It might be a while yet before the film hits cinemas, but this could at long last be the Super Mario film that fans have been waiting for.