For the past few years, Nintendo and Illumination have been quietly working on an animated Super Mario movie, with aims to release it sometime in 2022.

Although the film’s release date is still quite far off, some fans might be wondering if it could perhaps pave the way towards animated adaptations for Nintendo’s other well-known IPs such as The Legend Of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, and so forth.

In a recent interview with FastCompany, President Shuntaro Furukawa suggested that the company is indeed looking into expanding their IPs further, including animation beyond the Mario franchise. That said, their foremost priority is that such use of their properties “remain true to player experience”.

Although the ways we are expanding our IP are increasing, we are very, very careful about where and how our IP is licensed. We are not deploying our characters and worlds merely to increase public exposure.

We must make sure that the results are true to the players’ experiences, and that they would never prevent Nintendo’s developers from making another unique game featuring the same characters.

It’s not that we’ve asked Illumination to handle everything [regarding the Mario movie], Mr. Miyamoto is very, very hands-on with the production of this movie.

Animation, in general, is something that we are looking into, and not just this franchise.

Of course, whether more animated films or other such adaptations of Nintendo’s franchises are really in the works remains to be seen. We will be sure to report back with more details as they come.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.