Nintendo might be opening their portfolio of well-known video game stars and licensing them to movie makers again, this after a long period of not even listening to offers after the failed 1993 movie, Super Mario Bros.
But now Shigeru Miyamoto and the Software Planning & Development division are looking into the issue. Miyamoto said in an interview with Fortune, that "we've had, over the years, a number of people who have come to us and said 'Why don't we make a movie together—or we make a movie and you make a game and we'll release them at the same time?'"
And he followed up: "Because games and movies seem like similar mediums, people's natural expectation is we want to take our games and turn them into movies. ... I've always felt video games, being an interactive medium, and movies, being a passive medium, mean the two are quite different."
Also, in a recent investor relations note, Nintendo formally said the following: "For Nintendo IP, a more active approach will be taken in areas outside the video game business, including visual content production and character merchandising."
As Miyamoto puts it to Fortune, Nintendo is open to discussions: "As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo's role as an entertainment company, we're starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we'll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future."