The Super Mario Bros. Movie is getting a new trailer tomorrow. In a tweet, Nintendo confirmed that the Chris Pratt-led animated video game adaptation is getting a second exclusive presentation. The event will be live across Nintendo’s official YouTube channels on November 30 at 3:30am IST in India/ November 29 at 2pm PT in the US. As part of the announcement, Nintendo also dropped a new The Super Mario Bros. Movie poster featuring Princess Peach’s throne, placed before a glass stained window resembling her likeness.
The first trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie never featured the royal damsel in distress, voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit). We did get a brief glimpse of Peach’s castle towering atop a mountain, followed by Pratt’s (Guardians of the Galaxy) first voice line as Mario, which lacked the iconic high-pitched Italian accent. Pratt’s attachment to this movie raised concerns across the gaming space, even more so, when he told Variety that his take on the voice was “unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before.” The film also has Charles Martinet in its cast lineup, who originally voiced Mario and Luigi in the video games. You can guess why he isn’t playing the role.
Nintendo has also made it clear that the Direct event is devoted solely to The Super Mario Bros. Movie trailer, and that new video game updates will be offered. Other additions to the cast include Jack Black (Tropic Thunder) as Bowser, Seth Rogen (Superbad) as Donkey Kong, and Keegan-Michael Key (The Lion King) as Toad.
Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic co-direct The Super Mario Bros. Movie under original game creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s supervision, who is attached as a producer. Matthew Fogel, best known for Minions: The Rise of Gru and the The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, serves as the writer.
Earlier this month, John Leguizamo, who played Luigi in the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. movie, expressed his disappointment with the casting choices in the upcoming animated adaptation for being non-diverse. “The directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton fought really hard for me to be the lead [in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film] because I was a Latin man, and [the studio] didn’t want me to be the lead. They fought really hard, and it was such a breakthrough. For them to go backwards and not cast another [actor of colour] kind of sucks,” he said in a recent interview.
This marks the second time Leguizamo voiced his concerns regarding the “all white” cast. The first was after the first trailer, when he tweeted (via DailyMail) that he was the “only one who knows how to make this movie work script-wise!” Bear in mind, neither Pratt nor Leguizamo are of Italian descent.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is set to release April 7, 2023, in cinemas worldwide.
