Sebastian Maniscalco, one of the actors in the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie, has revealed that he will be playing Spike, whom he describes as the boss of the title characters. Maniscalco is mainly known for being a stand-up comedian, though this will not be his first time tackling a feature film. His biggest roles so far have been in Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. The new Super Mario movie will be entirely animated, and Nintendo has teamed up with Illumination, the studio behind Despicable Me, Minions, and The Secret Life of Pets to bring the classic video game characters to the big screen.
News about the upcoming movie has been extremely scarce. It appears to still be on track for a 2022 release, but Nintendo has yet to officially announce any casting information, including who will be playing Mario & Luigi. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto is on board as a producer, so it seems like Super Mario Bros. is at least starting from a stronger position than the critically lambasted 1993 live-action film of the same name, to which Nintendo took a very hands-off approach.
As reported recently on Nintendo Life, Sebastian Maniscalco revealed that he was playing Mario and Luigi’s boss Spike in the upcoming animated Super Mario Bros. film. He was asked by podcast host Bert Kreischer what his plans were for the rest of the day, and Maniscalco replied with: “I’m in a movie, Super Mario Bros., an animated movie. So I’m playing, erm, Spike, their boss. So I’m gonna do that at 12.”
In the 1984 game Wrecking Crew, Mario and Luigi worked as part of a titular group. They had a large hammer and were tasked with destroying various objects across 100 levels of gameplay, with a two-player mode eventually made so players could compete. One of the enemies of the games was their “boss,” a character named Spike who slows down Mario and Luigi’s efforts by throwing various objects at them. Though Maniscalco didn’t confirm the Spike he is playing is based on Wrecking Crew‘s Foreman Spike, it seems very likely that is the case.
The casual manner of Maniscalco’s reveal could hint that his role is somewhat minimal in the film. But knowing that part of the new Super Mario Bros. movie could be based on the old video game canon is sure to make a lot of fans happy. With the 1993 film, a lot of creative license was taken with the Super Mario world and characters, which some fans felt hurt the overall story (though to be fair, it has become a cult classic to many other fans). The new animated film seems set to correct those mistakes, but fans won’t know for sure until the finished product is released.
SOURCE: Nintendo Life
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