Chris Pratt Believes There Could Be A "Nintendo Cinematic Universe"

Nintendo and Illumination's The Super Mario Bros. movie was one of the highest-grossing films of the year last year, and Chris Pratt believes there's a way to make a Nintendo Cinematic Universe. Nintendo is working on multiple movies based on its franchises, including the Mario animated sequel and a live-action Zelda movie.

However, this could just be the tip of the iceberg. Pratt recently stated that there's plenty of room for franchise expansion, with a whole interconnected universe of Nintendo characters possibly on the way, outside of Mario and company.

"Oh, man! There's so much to explore. There are decades worth of [games] to explore, not only with Mario and Peach and Donkey Kong and Luigi and Bowser and Yoshi; that was teased at the end. But it just gets me so excited," he recently told Screen Rant. "I was such a Nintendo head growing up, so just thinking about how everything from Legend of Zelda to the entire Nintendo cinematic universe could be created and what that could look like for all of these characters that I love? I mean, there's really no limit. We could talk about it for hours."

Video game adaptations seem to finally be hitting their stride with both Prime Video's Fallout and last year's The Last of Us from HBO earning big ratings and critical acclaim. We're already looking at over 30 games aiming to head a movie or television screen in the next couple of years. Could the NCU be the next big thing in movie franchises?

The Super Mario Bros. Movie earned more than $1.3 billion at the box office to become 2023's No. 2 highest-grossing movie, trailing only Barbie. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was 2023's most profitable big movie, though, grossing a reported $500 million+ after all of its costs were factored in.