Super Mario Bros movie on the way from Minions studio

Massive mushrooms and turtle shells at the ready – a Super Mario Bros movie has been given the green light.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a deal has been struck between the Japanese gaming giant Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment, the animation studio behind the ‘Despicable Me’ and ‘Minions’ movies.

The studio, which is distributed and financed by Universal, is also responsible for the recent ‘Sing’ and ‘The Secret Life of Pets’ movies.

The WSJ says that a recent deal between Nintendo and Universal to create a series of theme parks helped grease the wheels for a movie featuring intrepid Italian plumber and his younger brother Luigi.

Unlike the majority of video game developers, Nintendo has been notoriously shy of moving into the world of movies.

It had its fingers burned badly in 1993, after it made the pioneering – but ill-feted – ‘Super Mario Bros’, the first ever movie to be based on a video game.

Starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi (and Dennis Hopper as King Koopa), it was an unmitigated disaster.

Distributed by Disney, and having cost $48 million to make, it made just $20 million at the worldwide box office, and was mercilessly panned by critics.

Though there have been Pokemon movies, Nintendo has been reticent to turns its intellectual properties into movies ever since.

According to reports, the Mario movie is currently in the early stages of development.

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