Pressure is on to get new Super Mario Bros movie right

But Pratt’s experience lending his voice to the hit Lego Movie franchise (2014 to 2019) showed how an animated adaptation of this sort could succeed. “It certainly raised the bar. And they did an extraordinary job of showing how you can take an intellectual property with a lot of reach, move it into the movie world, and craft a narrative that’s cutting-edge, fun, exciting and contemporary,” he says.

He also points out that compared with the blank slate of Lego’s building blocks, it was a little easier to conjure up a story based on the Super Mario games, which have established characters and distinct worlds. “It’s a little bit of an easier transition to go from the Mario Bros video game to a movie than it is to make The Lego Movie, but they’re not dissimilar. The Mario and Luigi characters, similar to Lego, are just things people play with.

There wasn’t really a story there,” says Pratt. Day, who also voiced a character in the Lego films, agrees. “All around the world, kids are taking their Mario or Luigi toy and making up a story that they’re being chased by whatever it is, and even with Legos, they do that as well,” says the 47-year-old American actor.

He starred in the Horrible Bosses comedy films (2011 and 2014) and the sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005 to present). “So it seems a natural evolution to take characters that people are already telling stories with, and then expand on those stories for the audience.” But it was important for Taylor-Joy that Princess Peach be much more than the two-dimensional character she is in the games.

“When I was first approached to play her, I was so thrilled and honoured.

But I didn’t want to do it unless she was more empowered and more three-dimensional,” says the 26-year-old British-American actress, who starred in chess drama The Queen’s Gambit (2020) and horror film The Menu (2022).