Nintendo has acquired the CG production company Dynamo Pictures and will rename the company Nintendo Pictures. The company announced that the subsidiary will “focus on the development of visual content utilising Nintendo IPs” and the “planning and production of visual content including CG animation”.

The acquisition comes ahead of an animated movie based on the Super Mario Brothers franchise starring Chris Pratt — Nintendo’s most anticipated cinematic release in years. The film is scheduled to release next year, almost thirty years after 1993’s poorly received live-action movue starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. The company also released a live-action adaptation of Detective Pikachu in 2019, based on the Pokemon franchise.

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The recent interest of production houses to turn video games into movies and TV shows is what led to such a decision by Nintendo. Earlier this year, a second film in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was released, and a TV show is currently in production for HBO based on The Last of Us.

Recently Sony also released Uncharted starring Tom Holland, a film adapted from the video game of the same title, and indicated that it wants to continue expanding its PlayStation IPs outside of video games. And of course, there is Netflix’s The Witcher with Henry Cavill as the lead and many more such adaptations.

Nintendo is expecting to close the acquisition by October 3 and will be acquiring 100 percent of the outstanding shares of Dynamo Pictures, which will become a wholly owned subsidiary of the video game company.

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