Nintendo and Illumination have revealed the voice cast for their upcoming animated film based on the world of the popular video game Super Mario Bros.
Announced during last week’s Nintendo Direct presentation, Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) will voice Mario in the new movie, with Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit), Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), and Jack Black (School of Rock), lending their pipes to Princess Peach, Luigi, and Bowser, respectively.
Also included in the voice cast are Seth Rogan (This is the End) as Donkey Kong, Keegan-Michael Key (Key and Peele) as Toad, Fred Armisen (Portlandia) as Cranky Kong, Kevin Michael Richardson (Mortal Kombat) as Kamek, and Sebastian Maniscalco (Green Book) as Spike. Charles Martinet, who has voiced Mario in various Nintendo video games since the 1990s, will also appear in the film for “surprise cameos.”
Originally announced back in 2018, the film will be co-financed by Universal Pictures and Nintendo, with Founder and CEO of Illumination, Chris Meledandri, and Representative Director and Fellow of Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto, both producing.
The movie will be directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic from a screenplay by Matthew Fogel, whose writing credits include 2019’s The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part and the upcoming Illumination feature Minions: The Rise of Gru. Horvath and Jelenic previously collaborated on the animated series Teen Titans Go! and in the 2018 film Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.
Plot details on the film are being kept under wraps, but with a North American release date of December 21st, 2022, more information about the flick is expected to be revealed in the coming months.
The upcoming movie will be the second feature-length film to be based on Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. video game series. The first one was the 1993 adventure comedy film Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the titular siblings. The movie was a commercial flop, only grossing $21 million at the domestic box office against a production budget of $48 million. Despite the poor reception, the film gained a cult following in later years and has been recently regarded as a cult classic.