Living Legend: A Super Mario Bros. Fan Film (2013)

Living Legend is a short, live-action fan film written and produced by Jonathan Grace and directed and produced by Dan Clifton. The film-makers launched a Kickstarter campaign for it in 2013, describing it like this:

“We’re creating a short, live-action fan film based in the world of Super Mario Bros., arguably the most recognized video game franchise in the world. In taking what Bourne did to the spy genre and The Dark Knight did to the superhero genre, we’re introducing a dark, grounded, visceral take on a property we’ve all grown to love. We’ve taken the legend and mythology and twisted it, setting it in a modern, broken city with believably complex characters.

There’s a reason we sometimes refer to this project as “Super Mario: The Next Generation”… because this isn’t directly about Mario. It’s about his son, Mark. Our story picks up 20+ years after his legendary father rescued the Princess in the 1980s. Years after the quests and adventures, worlds away from the castles and moats, Mark lives with his working class family in Brooklyn during a time where survival is a daily struggle. He’s volatile, passionate, and a petty criminal who’s constantly searching for his place in life until one night when life catches up with him. His girlfriend is kidnapped. With the love of his life taken, Mark rallies his brother, Lou, and degenerate group of friends to get her back. At all costs. But is this history repeating itself? Are legends born or made? Either way… This isn’t a game anymore.”

The film-makers’ pitch, 2013

No cast list was ever confirmed publicly in any source we could find, so the characters below come from the filmmakers’ 2013 pitch. The lead is Mark, the son of Mario, now a volatile petty criminal from a struggling working-class Brooklyn family. When his girlfriend Alyson, the story’s take on the Princess, is kidnapped, he pulls together his brother Lou and a group of friends to get her back.

Other familiar faces are given a real-world makeover too. Todd appears to be the project’s version of Toad, and Kevin Yoshimi is a grounded, human take on Yoshi.

It is said in official writings about this project that the characters featured within it will be recognisable by traits and mannerisms as the characters we know and love from the games but they will be adapted to “real world” versions as opposed to the heroes we know from the Mushroom Kingdom.

As pure speculation from my own part, I’d be very interested to hear if Mark and Lou’s uncle was going to be paying a visit…

Living Legend was devised as a short, live-action fan film, written by Jonathan Grace and directed by Dan Clifton, with both men producing. By July 2013 the pair had launched a Kickstarter campaign to pay for it, and Super Luigi Bros covered the project on 18 July 2013 with Vivian Quaid’s concept art of Mark, Alyson and Lou.

The pitch was a long way from the colourful games. The filmmakers promised a dark, grounded and visceral tone, citing the Bourne films and The Dark Knight as influences, and also called it “Super Mario: The Next Generation”. Instead of retelling a game, it imagines what happened to the Mario family once the adventures were over.

We could not confirm that Living Legend was ever finished or released. The Kickstarter page could not be loaded during our research, so its final funding total and backer count remain unknown, and no completed film, running time or official upload turned up in searches of news coverage, fan-film listings or IMDb.

The only material we can confirm is the 2013 announcement, the concept art and the teaser trailer below, which is still on YouTube. If you know where the finished film, or any later footage, can be watched, we would love to hear from you.

Living Legend: teaser trailer (2013)

The film was conceived as a sequel of sorts to the original games: it is set more than 20 years after Mario rescued the Princess, and its hero is his son. The supporting cast reimagines the core of the Mushroom Kingdom as ordinary New Yorkers, with Alyson standing in for Princess Peach, Todd for Toad and Kevin Yoshimi for Yoshi.

Its grim, street-level Brooklyn tone could hardly be further from the bright animation of Nintendo’s own films. The only official live-action Mario feature remains the 1993 Super Mario Bros. starring Bob Hoskins, which also sent the brothers through a dark, adult-leaning version of their world.

• The filmmakers also described the project as “Super Mario: The Next Generation”.
• The story is set more than two decades after Mario’s original rescue of the Princess.
• The Bourne series and The Dark Knight were named as the main tonal influences.
• Mario’s son Mark is a petty criminal rather than a hero, which marks a sharp break from the games.
• Yoshi is reimagined as a human character named Kevin Yoshimi.

Whatever became of it, Living Legend captures a time when Nintendo had not licensed a Mario film since 1993 and fans were imagining their own. That gap only closed in 2023 with Illumination’s animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie, ten years after this project was announced.

Super Luigi Bros covered the film when it was first announced in 2013. This page will be updated if the finished film, or any footage beyond the original teaser, comes to light.