Nintendo has recently announced a partnership with Illumination – the studio behind the Despicable Me franchise – to develop a Super Mario animated film. This comes on the heels of news last year that Nintendo has given the go-ahead for a Detective Pikachu movie starring Ryan Reynolds and may represent a much larger push the studio is making into film.

While little is known about the project yet, we do know that Nintendo has been working on this partnership for well over a year, and that the primary reason behind the slow pace is due to Nintendo’s need to have full creative control. Shigeru Miyamoto in particular, the creator of Mario, has been involved in the negotiations to ensure that the Super Mario IP is not damaged by a film adaptation.

While Illumination has started work on the project already, it was only in the last few days that Nintendo made the partnership complete, meaning for better or worse, an animated Super Mario is definitely on the way. Considering what happened the last time Super Mario came to the big screen, it is understandable why Nintendo has insisted on both creative control and taking things slowly.

For the fortunate many not alive during 1993, they missed out on the live-action Super Mario Bros. film. Even by today’s standards, it’s hard to imagine a video game movie missing the mark as completely as this did. King Koopa was just a human with gelled hair who ran a giant corporation, goombas were tiny-headed, mutated humans, and instead of the whimsical, goofy worlds that populated nearly every Super Mario game ever, the world was a dystopian mess of greed and corruption. Suffice to say, we know that no matter what the new Super Mario film is, it will be better than the last, but that is a pretty low bar.

The best news – or worst depending on your feelings about video game films – is that Nintendo is apparently exploring a “number of options” for films, and if one franchise makes the most sense as a thematic release, it’s Zelda. Nintendo may be waiting to see how its other properties do in theaters first, but if Pikachu and Mario can fill seats, we have little reason to doubt Zelda won’t be able to as well.