Super Mario Movie Sony 2

You won’t be seeing Super Mario on your PlayStation 4 anytime soon, but according to Buzzfeed, the pudgy plumber may be plotting a return to the silver screen – and it sounds like Sony’s engineering the move. A slew of leaked details filtering out of Sony Pictures suggest that the film factory has struck a deal with the Kyoto company to create a new animated flick based upon the Italian stallion. Producer Avi Arad appeared to confirm the tidbit in a hacked message to studio chief Amy Pascal, which included photos of him with creator Shigeru Miyamoto and CEO Satoru Iwata.

British actor Bob Hoskins famously portrayed the protagonist in the atrocious live action movie, Super Mario Bros. – but it sounds like this will be a very different beast, with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs team Sony Pictures Animation presumably bringing the property to life. That’s if it’s even in production anymore at all, as these emails date back to October, and anyone that’s followed the Uncharted Movie saga over the years will know just how tough it is to get these projects off the ground. There’s no word of any personnel attached to the picture yet, so that's not a good start.

To be honest, though, we reckon that the dungaree adorning hero is due another spell in the cinema, so we’d love to see this get made. We suppose with the Sony umbrella also including PlayStation, it would be a bit strange for the firm to back a competitor’s character, but these are separate entities within the organisation, and they’ve all got to earn a crust. Besides, it seems that Sony Pictures is pretty interested in the video game industry right now; a separate rumour from earlier in the year suggested that it’s lining up a flick about the console wars. Would watch.

[source buzzfeed.com, via kotaku.com, vg247.com]