The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, releasing April 1, 2026, accelerates that expansion dramatically by taking the crew into outer space. The sequel introduces Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson) and Yoshi (voiced by Donald Glover) to the roster, but will also feature Fox McCloud, the protagonist of Nintendo’s Star Fox franchise. Earlier promotional material had also confirmed appearances from Pikmin creatures and R.O.B., making clear that the Galaxy sequel is functioning as a broad-net recruitment exercise for non-Mario IP. Since a Donkey Kong movie is rumored to be in development, the strategy seems to be building familiarity through supporting appearances before graduating characters to their own features. With the Nintendo cinematic universe now open to the cosmos, certain characters are already positioned to be next.
5) Captain Olimar
Image courtesy of Nintendo
Nintendo’s Pikmin series centers on Captain Olimar, a pint-sized astronaut who survives on foreign worlds by directing colonies of plant-animal hybrids called Pikmin through exploration and combat. Promotional material for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie confirms that the Pikmin will appear in the film, giving the franchise its first mainstream cinematic exposure. Olimar himself is absent from the announced cast, but since Fox was only recently confirmed, the cosmonaut may still have a part to play in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. If not, there’s nothing preventing Illumination from adding Olimar to a likely sequel, now that the movie franchise has expanded towards the cosmos.
4) Shulk
Image courtesy of Nintendo
Xenoblade Chronicles is a Nintendo RPG franchise that follows heroes navigating civilizations built on the backs of colossal fossilized titans, fighting enemies, and unraveling mythologies centered on fate and the limits of free will. The franchise’s protagonist, Shulk, wields the ability to perceive and alter the future, a power with obvious cinematic utility in a universe that is already building toward large-scale crossover storytelling. Shulk is also one of the more recognizable non-Mario Nintendo characters globally, thanks to his recurring presence in Super Smash Bros. The Xenoblade setting is among the most visually spectacular in Nintendo’s portfolio, and a film set within it would give the shared universe a tone and scale distinctly different from anything the Mario films have established so far.
3) Kirby
Image courtesy of Nintendo
The Kirby franchise follows a small pink creature from the planet Popstar who defeats enemies by inhaling them and copying their abilities, gaining an entirely new power set and visual form with each transformation. That mechanic is an extraordinary asset for animation, since a single action sequence can cycle through a dozen distinct visual identities without breaking continuity. The franchise also operates within a mythology considerably darker than its pastel aesthetic suggests. That’s because the games regularly pit Kirby against cosmic horrors and reality-warping entities whose scale and menace are played entirely straight, giving screenwriters dramatic material that can coexist with the character’s cheerful surface. Since Kirby games often involve the hero planet-hopping to solve problems, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie could easily feature the character.
2) Captain Falcon
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F-Zero is a Nintendo racing franchise set in 2560, a future built around high-speed anti-gravity circuits and the bounty-hunting economy surrounding them. Captain Falcon is the franchise’s protagonist, a helmeted champion racer who finances his career through mercenary work, a dual identity that provides far more narrative flexibility than a straightforward heroic archetype. His visual design is immediately iconic, and decades of Super Smash Bros. appearances have made him one of the most recognizable Nintendo characters among audiences who have never played an F-Zero game. The space setting of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie makes his introduction feel coherent, and a standalone F-Zero film built on a Galaxy cameo would give Nintendo a racing franchise with a story dimension that the games themselves never fully developed.
1) Samus Aran
Image courtesy of Nintendo
No Nintendo character is as perfect for a space-themed movie as Samus Aran. The Metroid franchise follows Samus, an armored bounty hunter who takes on solitary missions against the parasitic Space Pirates and the biomechanical organisms called Metroids across hostile alien worlds. Samus lost her home colony as a child, received her combat training from an ancient alien warrior race, and built a career operating entirely alone against threats of civilizational scale. The premise already functions as a blockbuster science fiction template, and now that Illumination is diving deeper into the bigger Nintendo galaxy, the absence of Samus would be a major missed opportunity.
Which Nintendo franchise do you most want to see get the cinematic treatment after Fox makes its debut in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
