Universal Pictures has just struck a deal with streaming service Peacock, which will make its new movies Peacock exclusives in the US for the first and last four months of their 18-month streaming window, after it has finished its cinema showings.
This deal, which comes into effect in 2022, will affect the upcoming Minions movie, a Puss In Boots sequel, the next Jurassic Park movie, and the Super Mario movie, which is currently underway at Illumination.
Both Universal Pictures and Peacock are part of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, so if you’re wondering who the heck Peacock is — it’s NBC’s rival to Netflix and Disney+.
US viewers without Peacock will be able to watch the Super Mario either in the cinema, or during the ten-month period in-between the Peacock exclusive months.
Around this time last year, we heard that the Super Mario movie was “making good progress”, and in May, we reported that Chris Meledandri, the founder of Illumination, would be working more closely with Nintendo as a “non-executive outside director”.
However, a lot of information about the Super Mario movie is still unclear. cast as Mario (or even approached for the role).
As to whether we’ll be seeing more Nintendo movies in future — it’s a possibility, as Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said they were “looking into” representing other franchises.
People were actually expecting Charles Martinet to be approached for the role
This is Hollywood baby! We’re not playing by Nintendo’s rules anymore. Illumination has infamously been a studio that loves making movies, especially adaptations as cheaply as possible. It’s literally their mantra, all while casting bankable actors whose names they can stick on posters and advertising. Even Paramount did that with Sonic given Jim Carrey was everywhere in the advertising and both him and James Marsden were given top billing over the literal voice of the title role
I usually play devil’s advocate and give the benefit of the doubt with movies like this until footage is shown, but Illumination has proved time and time again that they clearly don’t have an artistic or creative drive behind any movie they make. They go the cheap, super cost effective route for the sake of their movies making mountains of profit. Of course they wouldn’t care about hiring the voice associated with the character for decades. He’s a nobody in Hollywood. It’s all about the star power with them.
Miyamoto being a “producer” on this film will probably not mean anything in regards to the film’s actual quality or even faithfulness to the material. Liberties will inevitably be taken to pander the film towards casual audiences who vaguely remember the image of an NES controller and not people who are actually Nintendo fans
@RadioHedgeFund I think slot of what is on international Netflix (or any streaming service) is just based on streaming rights from region to region. Unfortunately, rights to certain content is just too high of price for services like Netflix to plunk down for here in the states. That and companies probably feel they can make more money in the long run by providing their own content on their own platform. It’s inconvenient for sure. But it makes business sense and it was inevitably going to happen.
