Nearly four years after a Super Mario Bros. animated movie was announced to be in the works by the same studio behind Minions, we finally have the first details — er, detail — about it. During an interview on comedian Bert Kreischer’s podcast The Bertcast, fellow comedian Sebastian Maniscalco revealed he is currently working on the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie as the voice of Spike, Mario and Luigi’s boss. Maniscalo revealed the news when asked Kreischer asked him what he had on his to-do list for the rest of the day, to which Maniscalo replied he was off to do some work on the movie. That being said, it seems we can pretty safely assume the rest of the film has been cast and production is officially underway.
Now, if the name Spike isn’t ringing any bells for you, rest assured it’s a pretty deep cut from Nintendo. Spike, aka Foreman Spike, is actually a character from the Famicom/NES game Wrecking Crew. In Wrecking Crew, Spike is in change of overseeing Mario and Luigi as they demolish a building site, meaning we might see the film pivot away from the duo’s reputation as plumbers in the new film. While it’s not much to go on, at least we’re working with a bit more than the nothing we had.
Announced back in 2017, the new Super Mario Bros. movie is reportedly a joint project between Universal’s Illumination Entertainment (Minions, The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me, Sing) and Nintendo. Considering the only previous Mario movie of note is the 1993 Bob Hoskins title the actor went on to call “the worst job he’s ever done,” the competition isn’t all that stiff and there’s really nowhere to go but “1-UP” for the shell-stomping duo. If the previously announced timeline is still accurate, the film should be hitting theaters next year, making us due for a trailer any day now.