Last year’s Super Mario Bros. Movie was one of the biggest animated hits in a long time. With many industry pundits believing that moviegoing was becoming a thing of the past, in came Universal and Illumination’s tribute to Nintendo’s plumber to show everyone wrong. With a final box office gross of $1.3 billion globally, it’s safe to say that beyond the already-announced sequel, we’ll be seeing more of the brothers in the future.
As for what any potential new movies might cover, one of the more obvious inclusions would be Princess Daisy. While she hasn’t played a pivotal part in any mainline Mario game, she’s a fan-favorite character and could help expand the core cast beyond just Mario, Luigi, and Peach. According to some leaked concept art from last week, it seems the artists at Illumination are thinking the same thing.
Was Daisy really considered for the Mario Movie?
Likely as a way to celebrate the announcement of The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2, artist and story developer Jed Diffenderfer uploaded a bunch of pieces of concept art for the first film last week. Those shots include not only some expanded sequences from the first movie (likely cut down for time purposes) but also shots of Princess Daisy. She and Peach were apparently a troublesome duo in school.
I can already tell that the final battle sequence depicted in Diffenderfer’s artwork was probably reworked for budget reasons. Universal didn’t spare any expense when it came to creating its animated version of the Mushroom Kingdom, but $100 million is also not a blank cheque. If the first movie ended with such bombast, it would have driven costs up and there was no guarantee that Mario would be pulling in audiences by the boatload. There’s also no indication that Daisy was ever truly considered for the first movie as concept art is just that: a concept.
At any rate, there are plenty of ideas floating around at Universal for where to take this franchise in the future. We’re still a few years out from the follow-up, so we’ll need to be patient to see if these pieces become a reality.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
