March 10, or Mario day, is always a special occasion for fans of the mustachioed plumber, and its 2024 edition offered multiple exciting announcements from Shigeru Miyamoto himself, with a confirmation that a new Mario movie is on the cards and that new versions of two beloved entries in the franchise are about to get a shiny coat of paint.
Illumination Studios, the team behind last year’s Super Mario Bros. Movie, is set to return to the Mushroom Kingdom, with the release date set for Apr. 3, 2026 in the United States, and throughout the month of April in other territories. “We are thinking about broadening Mario’s world further” was as far as Miyamoto was willing to go at this point about the story.
The 2023 Super Mario Bros. Movie was a critical and commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing video game film of all time, a far cry from 1993’s live-action cult classic-slash-massive disappointment from Buena Vista. Last year’s movie currently holds a 7.0 rating on IMDb. The movie also played a key part in the design and development of Super Mario Wonder, with the success of the cinematic experience playing a large part in the bump in the art direction budget later in the development process.
The March 10 announcement also contained information about the release dates of the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, making this a truly standout Mario day for fans of the franchise. More details are likely to follow in the coming days and weeks.
