There’s nothing like a surprise movie casting to generate hype for your upcoming film. Unfortunately for Nintendo, the headliner for their animated Mario movie has many scratching their heads.
As a joint project between Nintendo and Illumination (the studio behind Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets), an animated Mario film will be gracing the silver screen in North America on December 21, 2022. During Thursday’s Nintendo Direct, the cast list was revealed for the upcoming movie and features… Chris Pratt as Mario?
Yep, you heard that right, Pratt will be voicing the titular character for Nintendo’s upcoming Mario film. This is not a joke.
Chris Pratt as Mario
Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach
Charlie Day as Luigi
Jack Black as Bowser
Keegan-Michael Key as Toad
Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong
Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong
Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek
Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike
Surprise cameos from Charles Martinet— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 23, 2021
The cast of the upcoming animated Mario movie also features some incredibly inspired casting, such as Charlie Day voicing Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad. However, for many Nintendo fans, the choice to cast Pratt as Mario when original voice actor Charles Martinet or Italian-American Danny DeVito were right there has many… quite confused.
One Twitter user, on the other hand, seemingly predicted this outcome well over a year ago somehow.
I'm calling it now, the Mario Bros movie will NOT have Charles Martinet play Mario for no reason and cast someone like Chris Pratt
— StheGeneral (@general_sthe) May 21, 2020
Here’s how the internet reacted to the news that Pratt will be set to voice everyone’s favorite video game plumber.
