Super Mario Bros: “We were on the track” … the studios are overloaded with the buzz of French voices!

In October 2022, when Nintendo and Illumination released the first trailer for the animated Super Mario Bros., the excitement was immediate!

If fans seemed captivated by these first images, a particular aspect of the feature film caught their attention: the French dubbing.

Very quickly, the performance of our actors went around the world, voiced by many fans! The latter preferred the French version over the proposed VO with Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Peaches, and Jack Black as Bowser.

On the hex side, it’s Pierre Tessier, best known for the French voice of Ryan Reynolds, who was chosen to play the mustachioed plumber. Benoit Dupac inherited his brother Luigi, Audrey Surdive gave his ring to Peach, and Jeremy Covillo played the big bad Bowser.

After this trailer was revealed and fans were excited, the fear remained: were Nintendo and Illumination going to keep this VF for a theatrical release or were they going to call in some star talent?

In the dubbing world, this means that the studio uses celebrities from the worlds of television, sports, comedy or YouTube for marketing purposes. This practice is highly controversial because it can work perfectly (Frank Dubosky in Nemo) as well as inflame fan tensions (Malik Bentalha in Sonic).

In an article published by BFM-TVThis decision was made by dubbing actors behind the scenes.

“Some stars are great, but dubbing actors shouldn’t be shadow actors. Star talent offers some visibility. Starification has brought respect to our profession.”First Super Mario dubbing art director Valerie Sickley explains.

The latter, along with the excitement generated by the strong VF trailers, managed to convince the studios not to hire star talent for the film.

“It was Valerie Sickley who was able to convince Nintendo and Universal to hire dubbing professionals. She really insisted and we wanted to”highlights Jérémie Covillaut, alias Bowser, in the BFM columns.

“We’ve been blown away by the frenzy. We’ve been very careful to keep the same people since the second trailer in January.”– says Valerie Sickley.

“We were on our ass!”Benoit Dupac, the voice of Luigi, raves about the buzz surrounding Mario’s VF. “Everybody in the US thought Pierre Tessier’s VF was better than Chris Pratt’s. It was a big ask. It’s historic.”Jeremy Covillo adds.

“After the success of this trailer they weren’t getting any star talent, I was able to test the film”recalls Audrey Sourdive, who now regularly doubles Anya Taylor-Joy in her films.

For his part, Pierre Tessier tried to best understand Chris Pratt’s intentions in his interpretation of Mario, getting a little closer to the original voice of the hero in the games, Charles Martinet.

“We were listening to Martinet’s sounds and I tried to get as close as possible to his sounds and come up with something fun and playful. It’s art. It’s very careful. We put our heart into it. And you hear it.”– explains the actor.

According to Benoit Dupac, the media frenzy and the buzz generated on the Internet put some pressure on the studios.

“They had already taken the fans away with Sonic. They were afraid of new bad buzz. Universal, Illumination and Nintendo were a little bit in spite of themselves and a little overwhelmed by the buzz. We were very, very happy to see it go all the way.”said the actor, also known as the voice of Glenn on The Walking Dead.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Coviglio hopes the success of Super Mario will shift the lines to star talent. “I’m not sure it’s groundbreaking, but it might be a bit of an eye-opener. It would be nice if the decision-makers realized that we’re doing a very good job, and sometimes a better job than star talent.”.

In France, the animated film will soon exceed 2 million. In the world, it breaks records at the box office, it has already reached the pharaonic amount of 678 million dollars!

Benoit Dupac performs his iconic vocals in VOIX OUF