'The Four Players:' Evan Daugherty's Gritty Four Part Adaptation Of Super Mario Bros.
Evan Daugherty is a rising star in Hollywood. He wrote Snow White and the Huntsman, Divergent, and the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now he's taking an obvious love of '80s and '90s pop culture behind the camera. He wrote and directed a four-part short film series called The Four Players, which is a gritty new take on Nintendo's sacred property Super Mario Bros.
The first two films, The Fixer, which follows Mario, and The Addict, which follows Luigi, are now online. The Star (with Princess Peach) and The Soldier (with Toad) will be online Friday. They're pretty fun, check them out below.
Variety alerted us to the films, which were produced by Polaris.
Here's Mario in The Fixer
And Luigi in The Addict
It's unclear if, once the other two introductions are posted, this series will move forward and combine the characters into a larger story. Even if they don't, it's still a pretty entertaining spin on the property. Nintendo famously licensed Super Mario Bros. for a film in the '90s, which was a total disaster. Since then the company has yet to make any moves in Hollywood.
In a statement, Daugherty said the following: "Making these short films gave me a chance to really 'do my own thing,' while having a little fun treating one of my favorite video game properties with a darker vibe. I had been kicking around the idea for years before I was even working in the industry, so to finally be able to share these films with fans on Polaris is a very exciting thing."
Here's the question these films raise. Is Super Mario Bros. adaptable in a way that's more true to the source material? Or would a filmmaker have to go with this more gritty, realistic approach with dashes of fantasy to bring it to the masses?