Mario is something that many fans hold dear, being the one video game character that fans have grown up with since they were little. With the major flop of the Super Mario Bros movie back in the early 1990s, it’s only fair that Nintendo is apprehensive when another company comes knocking asking to make another film of one of their IP’s. However, over the past five years, Nintendo has appeared to warm up a bit to Hollywood, revealing another Mario movie with a scheduled release date of 2022.

The monkey’s paw might have curled one finger on the announcement of this movie, though, as the company working with Nintendo on the film is the animation company Illumination Entertainment.

For those unfamiliar with Illumination’s work, they’re the animation studio responsible for making the Despicable Me series of films and their spinoff series, Minions. They’re also responsible for working on Secret Life of Pets and Sing.

The founder of Illumination, Chris Meledandri, is the one working with Nintendo on the production of the Super Mario Movie, slated to come out sometime during 2022. However, it seems that Nintendo is starting to rely more on the founder of Illumination, as they have stated that they’re going to start putting more effort into making more traditional media related to their properties.

The decision to partner with Illumination isn’t based purely on Nintendo’s decision, however. It also comes down to another partnership the company has made over the past few years, and that partnership is with the entertainment company Universal. With Super Nintendo Land Launching in Japan, being part of Universal’s theme park attractions, Nintendo is using Illumination as the company to make the movie, as Illumination is also part of Universal’s lineup of movie studios.

This will all culminate in Meledandri being someone that Nintendo can consult for future films with other Nintendo characters, something the company is heavily considering. While the Rep. Director of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa, made very minimal statements about Meledanri during the Q&A, Shigeru Miyamoto opened up more when giving his thoughts about working with the founder of the animation studio. For those who want to read the Q&A in its entirety, the link to the translation of the Q&A can be found here.

“Although this has no direct tie with his appointment as a director, I’ve been working with Chris for over five years now on the Super Mario movie. Through that relationship, I think he really came to understand the Nintendo point of view. I don’t think it’s easy for those overseas involved in media creation to understand Nintendo’s way of thinking, but Chris truly comprehends why Nintendo creates characters and visual content. We are working on mobile and visual content in order to expand our integrated hardware-software entertainment business globally. Working on mobile content reminded us again that while the Nintendo game systems may have reached some parts of the world, there are many places where they are not widespread…..we think that asking for Chris’s input, as an expert with many years of experience in Hollywood, will be of great help to us in the future.”

Hopefully, Miyamoto is right in his faith behind the founder of Illumination. With no information about the Mario movie coming out during the press conference, it’s hard to say what the quality is going to be like when it makes its way to theaters next year.