Chris Pratt And Anya Taylor-Joy React To Super Mario Bros. Casting With Sweet Messages

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Video game movies have been seeing a resurgence as of late, between recent adaptations of Mortal Kombat, Sonic the Hedgehog and Tomb Raider. And there’s a lot more where that came from. One upcoming movie based on a video game will be Illumination Entertainment’s Super Mario Bros. animated movie and this week the cast was assembled. Chris Pratt will be playing Mario, Charlie Day will be Luigi, Jack Black will be Bowser, Seth Rogen will be Donkey Kong and Anya Taylor-Joy will play Princess Peach, just to name a few. With the news out, a couple of the movie’s stars have reacted to their new roles.

When Chris Pratt was announced as Mario, it was met with a bit of uncertainty from fans, some of which went straight to campaigning for Danny DeVito to take on the role instead. Even so, Pratt took to his Instagram to share a sweet reason why Mario is a dream role of his. In his words:

"So when I was a kid, I lived in Lake Stevens, Washington and there was this coin-operated laundromat near my house and it had Super Mario Bros, the original arcade game. Oh, I loved that game. I never had a quarter it felt like. I’d either steal them from the wishing well [laughs], you know? That’s wild. It just dawned on me right now that the quarter I stole out of the wishing well to play Super Mario Bros has come true that I get to be the voice of Mario, but I clearly stole someone else’s wish… so just waiting for that row of karma dominoes to come crashing down on me. But as it is right now, it’s-a mee, a-Mario! That’s not the voice, you’ll have to wait to hear the voice, but we’ve been working hard at it and I’m really excited to announce that I’m going to be the voice of that video game that I dreamed about playing as a kid. Dreams come true."

Like the casting or not, Chris Pratt definitely seems passionate about playing the mustachioed video game hero. He shared that it was a favorite game of his growing up and he’d steal quarters from a wishing well just to play it. While speaking about it, he realized that he might have some bad karma rolling his way now that its powers have perhaps created this opportunity, but in the meantime he’s excited to bring his own spin on the role. Check out the video where he shared his personal connection with the character:

Pratt jokingly said Mario’s most popular phrase in the video, before promising fans that it wasn’t the voice he was going to use for the Super Mario Bros. movie. His costar, Anya Taylor-Joy, has been nabbing role after role as of late, such as Queen’s Gambit and soon playing Furiosa in the Mad Max spinoff film. The actress shared her reaction about the role to Instagram as well:

It’s short and sweet. Taylor-Joy simply said “here we goooo,” posting a side-by-side image of herself in pink with the video game heroine. Also joining the cast is Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong and Charles Martinet, the original voice of Mario will be making some “special cameos” throughout the movie. The Super Mario Bros. movie is set to come out on December 21, 2022.