Miyamoto suggests Nintendo movie licensing may be back on the cards

Movies based on brands such as Zelda and Mario could become a reality in the near future.

Rumours of growing film aspirations within the walls of Nintendo have been gaining momentum for some time, and now development boss Shigeru Miyamoto has said that Nintendo movies could very much feature in the company’s plans.

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?’,” he told Fortune at this year’s E3.

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.

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.”

Stories emerged late last year of talks between Sony and Nintendo over a possible Mario film. The Sony Pictures hack earlier this year unearthed proof of talks about movie licensing rights for a range of Nintendo IP including Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong.

There was even talk at one stage of a live-action Zelda TV series being commissioned by Netflix, although former Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata later dismissed these rumours. Miyamoto made his film debut last year, releasing a number of animated Pikmin shorts.