Nintendo snaps up animation studio – will probably help with future movies-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro

The last time Nintendo and Dynamo Pictures worked together was in 2014 for three Pikmin shorts (pic: Nintendo)

Dynamo Pictures will soon be Nintendo Pictures and is expected to solely work on the company’s future movie and animation projects.

Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo doesn’t seem especially eager to snap up other game studios to absorb into its collective. Its biggest buy out in recent memory was Next Level Games, which already had an extremely close working relationship with Nintendo.

Now, the company’s next acquisition isn’t even of a game developer, but instead an animation studio called Dynamo Pictures.

It won’t be called that for much longer, though, as Nintendo plans on renaming it to Nintendo Pictures once the acquisition closes on October 3.

As for why Nintendo wants it to become a subsidiary of the company, it’s to ‘strengthen the planning and production structure of visual content in the Nintendo group.’

While this could apply to animated cut scenes for future games, ‘visual content’ could also be a broad term for animated movies and TV shows.

Nintendo has publicly shared the notification of the acquisition and you can read it here, but it doesn’t reveal much else.

The most surprising aspect of the acquisition is that Dynamo Pictures has only worked with Nintendo a couple of times before. It did the 2014 Pikmin short movies and, according to MobyGames, assisted with the cut scenes for 2010’s Metroid: Other M.

A quick scout through its website shows that it has partnered with several other studios. Some examples include at least one of Capcom’s 3D animated Resident Evil movies, as well as motion capture work for Atlus’ Persona 5 and Square Enix’s Nier Replicant.

With it to become a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo has effectively cut it off from other companies, so the likes of Square Enix and Capcom will need to look elsewhere.

It’s been clear for a while that Nintendo has big aspirations for expanding its franchises into other media beyond games, which is a complete 180 from its past attitude following the live action Super Mario Bros. movie in 1993.

Its first major animated film, which is another attempt at Super Mario, isn’t out until next year and still lacks a trailer. It’s being helmed by Despicable Me and Minions studio Illumination and has a star studded voice cast, with Chris Pratt as the controversial pick for Mario himself.

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Nintendo has talked about making more animations in the past, and even recently set up its own company to specifically handle future movies.

No other projects beyond the Mario movie have been formally announced, but a report from Giant Freaking Robot claims there are plans for a Donkey Kong spin-off movie starring Seth Rogen (who will voice the character in the Mario movie).

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