Nintendo has nominated Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri to be the company’s new outside director after his work on the upcoming Super Mario movie.
Revealed in Nintendo’s latest financial report, in a section detailing ‘change of director’, the company have put forward Meledandri as “anticipated new Director” noting that “the change will be effective upon approval at the 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to be held on June 29, 2021.”
Meledandri’s new role, if accepted, will mean that he is a member of Nintendo’s board of directors and will provide outside input into the company’s future projects. Considering that Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was recently quoted as saying that the Super Mario movie isn’t the company’s only plan to shift into other media, it would make sense to have the CEO of Illumination - the animation powerhouse behind the likes of Despicable Me, Minions, and The Secret Life of Pets - on board during Nintendo’s foray into animation.
This partnership likely came about due to Illumination developing the highly anticipated Super Mario movie, which was recently confirmed to be released in 2022 with Nintendo icon Shigeru Miyamoto joining the development team as a producer alongside Meledandri.
Nintendo’s president Furukawa has also recently stated that Nintendo will be focusing on creating more original games from now on and that the company would need to continue to innovate in order to survive in the now competitive entertainment market - noting that “with the expansion of time spent at home, the range of ‘entertainment’ as an object of consumption is expanding.” It seems that Nintendo has a lot of big things in the works for fans over the coming years.
For more about the inner workings at Nintendo, find out why Shigeru Miyamoto describes Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters as “a bit boring”
