‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Sets Sequel for April 2026

March 10 — or Mar. 10 — serves as the official Mario Day in the video game world, and Nintendo celebrated the occasion Sunday by finally announcing a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination’s Chris Meledandri delivered the news in a Mario Day video, revealing that the sequel will arrive on April 3, 2026, two days shy of three years after the first film was released on April 5, 2023.

More from Rolling Stone

• We Found 5 Nintendo Switch Bundles To Get More Bang for Your Gaming Buck

• Princess Peach Is Starring in Her First Game in Two Decades - And It's Great

• The 9 Best Portable Gaming Consoles

Meledandri added that The Super Mario Bros. Movie co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic would return for the sequel, and that they and their team of animators were “busy at work storyboarding scenes and developing set designs for new environments.” “We start animation soon, and rest assured we’ll be obsessing over every detail to get it just right,” Meledandri said.

Given the record-breaking, billion-dollar box office total of the original, a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie was inevitable; the film even teased the next one with a post-credits scene featuring a Yoshi egg. However, neither Nintendo nor Illumination officially announced the sequel in the 11 months since the original’s release — instead, Nintendo planned a Zelda movie — leading even Jack Black (who voiced Bowser and sang the surprise hit “Peaches”) to wonder what the situation was.

“It has been radio silence,” Black told Variety in December 2023 of the sequel. “The only chatter has been coming from me, and I don’t even know if I’m allowed to chatter. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back to business.”

The Super Mario Bros. Movie also featured the voices of Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong.

Best of Rolling Stone

• 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century

• Risky Business: Every Tom Cruise Film, Ranked – Updated

• 70 Greatest Music Documentaries of All Time