Why it’s time for Nintendo to revisit that canceled ‘Star Fox’ adaptation for Netflix

wegotthiscovered.com:

Once upon a time in a land called “2015,” Nintendo was apparently considering making a TV series based on its lesser-known Star Fox franchise. Now that The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a huge success at the box office, raking in $1.3 billion and counting, it’s time for Nintendo to revisit the project — if only to boost their own IP.

The story begins, surprisingly, with CollegeHumor. In an interview a few years back with The Serf Times YouTube channel, comedian Adam Conover revealed that his former employers at CollegeHumor were working directly with rockstar game designer Shigeru Miyamoto on a claymation Star Fox series based on the stop-motion work in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox film adaptation.

The idea itself was based on a beloved 2011 CollegeHumor sketch, depicting Fox McCloud himself having a bit of an existential crisis:

Unfortunately, a while later, Netflix decided to leak their plans for a live-action Legend of Zelda series in the Wall Street Journal, which gave Nintendo cold feet about getting into the adaptation business altogether. The video game giant said the leak was “not based on correct information” and essentially canned the Zelda project, per Nintendo Life.

In response, Conover explained, Netflix “freaked out” and canceled Star Fox as well, presumably because it was under the assumption it had poked the Goomba and was in danger of overwhelming Nintendo, which is well-known to be extremely particular about how its properties are handled (which is probably why it took this long to get a Super Mario Bros. film after the 1993 movie turned out so…interestingly.)

It’s a shame that one leak killed two different Nintendo adaptations, but now that The Super Mario Bros. Movie has become an unqualified success,