Fake EarthBound Movie Trailer

I noticed most of these were snippets from other movies pasted together to cleverly look like it’s all on one topic, nice. Anyways, it looks pretty awesome, and I want an EarthBound movie more than anything. (Hopefully directed by Steven Spielburg ^_^)

I don’t think there should be a movie for Earthbound. Maybe Mother 3, because Itoi contemplated turning it into a book/movie.

do you think there’ll ever be a movie adaptation (not necessarily a Hollywood movie) of one of the MOTHER games at some point in time?

Honestly, no. But it would kick an unbelievable amount of ass if it were ever to happen.

A fan-film? Absolutely- Considering how many Earthbound-Inspired skits and series there are, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if somebody decided to take up the challenge of creating a feature length film.

Trailer was a bit too mish-mashy for me (Ness is a young boy, then he’s an older teenager, what?) But it’s a pretty cool idea. A movie based on the Mother games would be cool, but 99/100 times you get terrible adaptions. Ah, if it ever happens, just fend off Uwe Boll with a big stick and we might get a decent adaption. But what’d probably happen is all the kids are aged up to about twenty, the charming humour is replaced by unfunny bits and pieces, and oh boy I’m getting depressed >.>

I think we all know what needs to be done.
Everyone, gather your baseball bats, slingshots, frying pans, wigs, yellow backpacks and red hats.
It’s time to make the dreams of thousands come true.
We shall create a film so badass that Hollywood will scream in rage.
MOTHER FANS UNITE!!!

Well made, but very typical.

A Mother movie would not have a typical trailer. :]

If I were extremely rich and had connections in the movie industry, I would pull some strings to have a movie based on MOTHER created. Not necessarily one that would be aired in theaters, but just using all the professional equipment and staff to make the production value really high. 🙂 MOTHER has a compelling story.

with the games popularity over here in the west, I doubt it would be made here. Although, the game is very very popular in japan so they may make one there someday.

It is a possibility that a Mother/EarthBound movie could be made somewhere in the future someday but who knows, it might not even come out at all.

If only had connections to the movie industry and had enough money, then maybe…

🙂

I like how it comes out on my birthday(:

But to answer the question: I really doubt it. And other people have already said the reasons why. But yes, there could possibly be one in Japan. That would be pretty sweet. ;3

I still remember this thing someone wrote on Starmen.net back from ’06 called “What I Want from an Earthbound Movie” and I remember I used to really agree with it, but now I’m find that the only thing I agree with is that Mr. Saturns should be voiced by Frank Oz.

I remember that about a year ago mato had a post about a poll in japan about what video games they want turned into movies. Mother was 4 or 6 or something like that. so there is that possibility of at least a fan movie in japan.

If they were to make Mother/EB into a movie it world be probably be Japanese only and anime.
The trailer’s mixed scenes seem completely unrelated. He looks like Percy Jackson and then suddenly he looks like that guy from the Aliens in the Attic movie, then he is a young kid.

Is an official film likely? I hardly need answer that, all things considered. Would I like to see such a thing? Unquestionably yes. Were I headed in that sort of career path, I would certainly love to look into the possibility, but I’m not so I can’t, so yeah. I’ve come across a fan-written screenplay for a film adaptation of EarthBound, and it was excellent. It was obviously fanmade, but it demonstrated that the story can be translated to film pretty well.

I have to agree with MG on this one. There shouldn’t be an EarthBound/Mother 2 movie (especially if Suckheimer produces it, blech!), but Mother 3 would be fantastic! It has more heart, and it’s more believable( ..right?).

Most likely not, but that’s good to me. I hope a remake of Earthbound is made one day though.

Will Hollywood ever make any Mother movies? Tch. No. I’d even go so far as to say HELL no. I could never forsee that.

I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if studios in Japan made one or two, but perhaps that’s not very likely even then.

i will make an animated movie.
seriouly.

This goes for everyone, but unless you’re Studio Ghibli you should leave the Mother series alone when it comes to films.

From 1101.com: Itoi’s dog, Bouillon, just had his 7th birthday.

Personally I’d love to animate something Earthboundy(I seriously have a TON of ideas for animations based on all 3 games), but unfortunately I lack the skills in Flash, etc. 🙁

I believe I see a few cutscenes from various Disney-inspired movies in that fake trailer. Also, I believe I saw a little scene from The Goonies, where they were all going to that secret cavern underneath the wishing well.

To be honest, i would rather see an Anime version of Mother than a real life adaption, it has been done before of video games, but i believe Mother has been long overdue for a film or two.

Name me one video game movie that was good.

@PK Saturn – Street Fighter

I don’t think a Mother movie is at all likely, but if we were to see one, I’d rather see it animated. Part of the game’s charm to a lot of people was its art style; that wouldn’t translate to live-action at all. In fact, I can almost imagine it being directed by Miyazaki.

I think that a movie adaptation of the Mother series would be awesome. ^_^ Of course, we’d have to have spies/ninjas to make sure that the producers didn’t mess it up. 🙂

@Starman 99- I like the Miyazaki idea, and I could totally see that happening. But a live-action movie could be really good if they did it right, too. (Imagine a live-action Starman, or Carbon Dog, or the ending battle…*jaw drops*)

Think about it: There is so much story around what you see in the games- like when Ness walks into that one cafe in Summers, and the lady says, “Steak? Why would we serve steak here?” You just KNOW that Ness asked her about that. I’d like to see that in movie-form.

I think that the Mother series has enough material to make either a trilogy of all three games, or even a three part series of just Earthbound. Either way, I agree that Earthbound is way overdue for a movie. 🙂

Aw man, it WOULD be amazing if Studio Ghibli were to take on the Mother movie! ;O
I just doubt that would happen either.
I do think it’s likely to be made into a movie in Japan, but I think it would probably be a fan-made movie.
And it’s not really that often that a video game gets made into a movie anyway. It has happened (Prince of Persia, etc.) but I just can’t picture it ever happening with Mother.

Hopefully I’m wrong. ;]

The first 30 seconds or so were good, then it all kinda just fell apart.

Well, we already have a (very huge) screenplay. Now all we need is somebody to use it!

Heh, too bad that’s unlikely to happen… This screenplay is also a rather interesting adaptation… I’m not sure what people think about it.

http://psirockin.webs.com/index2.htm

Not a bad trailer. At least it looked professionally done.

As for a movie, I’m sure at some point someone in the fan community would want to put together a low budget movie for EarthBound. Mark my words – a matter of time. Look at Mega Man and Legend of Zelda, 2 games that just recently had fairly decent quality fan movies made after them. Granted, those are bigger franchises, but hey, EB fans are much more tenacious. 🙂

In the meantime, we’ll always have EB Saga.

No, Earthbound should never be made into a movie…ever…especially not an anime of any sort.

I’d would like to see a movie, but it would never happen, or happen and look bad. This video also showed how kids in movies all look the same.

From a realistic point of view, MOTHER/EB0 should be made as a movie first. Obviously it’s first in the series, but it’s short and simple enough that it could probably be made into a comfortable 3-hour movie, and it still leaves a lot of open interpretation that could be utilized to making a movie adaptation even more successful.

For example, MOTHER 1 was unique in that it had no set pattern of bosses – they just kind of appeared. M2 and M3, on the other hand, have a much more predictable JRPG boss formula, and watching Ness battle all eight sanctuary bosses would be horribly boring. Galena’s screenplay did an excellent job in avoiding that pitfall, though.

But then you have to consider the fact that even with a load of stuff cut out, M2 and M3 would be REALLY long, whereas M1 would not.

And no, an animated film would be a mistake. It would most likely enforce in people’s minds that anything made by Nintendo is kiddy and worthless. I know that sounds like horrible stereotyping, but I have a feeling that I’m right to some extent there.

Well, it DID happen with Mega Man (as was mentioned) and for a fan movie it was actually fairly decent despite some of the acting and a few of the CG models. It may well happen some day with the Mother series.

I don’t think An EarthBound/Mother movie will ever happen, but if it did, I think it would work best in an animated form. However, whatever studio did it would have to handle it really carefully; If it was made by an American studio, I’d say get Pixar up in there. For a Japanese studio…Ghibli or maaaaaaybe Gainax, if it was a series of OAVs?

I just can’t see it working as well in a live action format. When I see live action adaptations of videogames, they always seem to take themselves really, really seriously and get really grimdark. With an animated movie it’s easier to imagine some really serious scenes while still containing that funny, Mother charm.

If some of the young Earthbound-fans grow up to be filmmaker then maybe yes

@Ice Sage

If anyone thinks Studio Ghibli films are “kiddy and worthless” they are failures at life and nobody gives a damn what they think. Studio Ghibli films strike the perfect balance between family films and dark, geniunely creepy things, which would be ideal for an EarthBound movie. Hell, most Ghibli films follow a similar structure to EarthBound, going from a simple, homely world to an increasingly strange and fantastical locations and culminating in an epic and often geniunely nightmare inducing finale.

A live action EarthBound would just be embarassing in my opinion. No live action remake of a game has left the plot alone. They’ve messed about with it. Made it Hollywood. Even fan films totally screw everything up, look at the Zelda one for an example. I’ve yet to see a live action fan film that was anything longer than a few minutes that wasn’t just plain awful.

Oh, and sorry to double post… but you’d essentially need four utterly brilliant child actors. Good luck with that.

@Starman 99
“@PK Saturn – Street Fighter”
LOL. No.

@Violet: You’re completely right about the child actors. Most of the time they’re only notable for cringe-inducing line delivery (at least in my own experience 😛 ). You’d probably have to bump up their ages a bit to around 15 or so to try to counter that.

And I have no idea what Ghibli even is, so I’m sorry. I was trying to consider what a mainstream audience would require to be drawn to a movie based on a 90’s Nintendo game.

I perfectly understand that if a movie really was made out of MOTHER, it would probably be a disaster. Everything I’ve said is pretty much hypothetical, with the condition that said movie WOULDN’T require you to rinse your eyes with bleach later.

I think that if earthbound were to be adaptated in to a movie it would most likely be anime and would only be realeased in Japan.

@Ice Sage: Studio Ghibli is Miyazaki’s film studio. They’re responsible for Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, among others. Personally, I think they could work really well with the setting and characters of EB.

Yes, but would Ghibli ever even consider it? They usually seem to do adaptions of well-loved fairy tales, wouldn’t it be sort of weird for them to all of a sudden draw inspiration from an older video game?

@psei64
Not necessarily. Howl’s Moving Castle was based on a book written by Diana Wynne Jones, an author from England. It almost would seem MORE likely to make a movie based on a Japanese video game that’s still going strong.(Master Belch and Saturns, anyone?) Plus, Itoi did the voice-acting for My Neighbor Totoro. I could imagine them picking up the Mother series for a movie…

@psei64

Studio Ghibli are working on Ni no Kuni, the game that has been mentioned on this site a number of times due to the connection with EarthBound (it is made by Level-5, who have commonly worked with Brownie Brown, and they helped make Mother 3), which includes a ROID version of the game that seems to use a graphical style identical to the Mother series.

So in actuality, the idea of Studio Ghibli making an EarthBound movie is not unusual at all, and would probably be perfectly possible if Itoi sat down in a room with them and worked it all out.

I’d argue that Mother 3 would make a better film, though.

Well, after seen the dedication the mother 3 translation patch got and (of course) the marvelous result, I guess it’s a fact that a fan-made movie COULD be a very good one. Now that doesn’t mean it can be done easily. As we all know, the magnificence from the Earthbound/Mother series comes from the tiny details which would be very hard to see correctly use in a movie. So I think it is posible, but terribly hard to direct if we want it to be good.

As for the film industry… well… this film would be an objective, not a way to get money, which means they would be out of this. If a decent movie must be done, it must be done by their fans alone.

@Violet and Ice Sage:

Child actors are something to avoid unless they are particulary good. I don’t like how most of them act in movies either, but there are a few good ones. An animation is probably better than a live movie, but that’s probably because the game isn’t suposed to look real. I mean, with the given technology Itoy could have made mother 3 characters to look realistic, while he still decided them to look like cartoon characters. There must be some reason behind that.

No, I’m sorry, but having the fans do the movie is a BAD idea. It’s the job of a director to put their spin on a story, and people have no right to criticize them for that. If we let fans do a movie, it will literally be a playthrough of the game.

The beginning was great but then it started to suck.
An animation series of EathBound/Mother 3 should be made.

(To lazy to log in)
Ni No Kuni has some similarities….something happens to the Mother…..

An Anime or a Live Action adaptation would be a horrid mistake. I don’t know why but the official art was in clay-mation and I think if there is going to be a movie, it must be as near to the official art. I know clay-mation looks cheep but sometimes it’s just timeless. (Like Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer)

The chance of Miyazaki collaborating with Itoi is slim. He had to beg Ursula K. Le Guin to do a movie for Tales From Earthsea, she refused. Then when she wanted a movie, he was busy and passed the job to his son Goro…and you know how that came out. :C Really BAD!

I think Galvancito has a point. What if the entire Mother community got together to make a fan movie? As a fanbase, we could make sure that the movie has the same charm as the original game, which Hollywood maybe wouldn’t. We have artists, we have flash animators, we have voice actors, we have musicians, and we could totally make this happen.

@Rhyselinn

Movies take a lot of work and a hell of a lot of money to be much good. Like someone already said, child actors are something to avoid and something fan films in particular could not even begin to do well. So what do you do? Adult actors for the characters? It wouldn’t work, it would be horrible.

It HAS to be an animation, and animated fan films have so much more chance of being good. I am a huge Zelda fan but I can’t bring myself to watch all of the fan film because it really is genuinely painful to watch. Its basically a BAD Hollywood movie. Fan films try to be Hollywood on a hideously poor budget and they always fail.

@Violet: Hadn’t heard of Ni no Kuni before. Is it coming out in the US?

@Rhyselinn: There is no way in hell that a fan made film would be good. Aside from the obvious (terrible acting, bad animation, etc.), fans have no idea how to shrink the plot for a movie.

I’m working on them 🙂

The scripts anyway. I don’t actually have the knowledge of resources to produce a Hollywood quality film so I’m doing what I can with the talents I have. I started it for fun but sometimes I wonder if I should pitch these scripts (once finished) to a studio.

That movie would be awesome. Kids with psychic abilities are always awesome. Every kid dreams of waking up one day and having developed some psychic powers.

I think it’d sell.

@Millhouse

It wouldn’t be EarthBound. EarthBound isn’t about the psychic powers as much as it is about a hell of a lot of other things. The pyschic powers are really just thrown in as a way to make the gameplay work better. Psychic, magic… if your focus was on just selling a film about kids who gain psychic powers it’d just turn into another Harry Potter.

A Mother film would only work if Itoi wrote it. He’s a writer, its what he does, and its his series. I suspect if he made a Mother film he’d use a whole new plot though, or he’d go back to the plot of the first game and flesh it out.

@Starman 99

No confirmation yet I don’t think, but the Layton games made it over after a long period and Ni no Kuni isn’t even out in Japan until December, so I suspect we may see it… eventually. Though there’s the 3DS to consider…

A Hollywood Action Movie? No
An Anime Movie? Hell No
A Fan Movie? Hell Freaking No

If someone we should let to make a Mother film should be Itoi himself, but he said he had already a bunch of trouble writting Mother 3’s storyline, so its highly unlikely for a Mother movie to happen eventually.

@Violet: True, Ni no Kuni is a long way off. My main concern is that translating the book to English would ruin the writing/keep it from being released. But I guess they’ll have to see JP sales figures first anyway.

And I agree that Itoi is the only person who could write it as completely and faithfully as we’d want. I can see it as being a trilogy of films; one for each game. And if he wrote in some better backstory/scenes to bridge the gap between games, we’d have the whole plot there instead of only one game’s worth.

Not to be rude, but that was really just nonsense. For a few seconds at the beginning I was feeling it, but the rest was just random clips from movies with kids.

It wouldn’t be so far-fetched if some Japanese MOTHER fans went and made a movie. It wouldn’t be surprising if they’d already done it.

I don’t think it’s possible to translate mother from a game format to a movie format. Mother (more than most games) is very abstract, which allows you to develop everything in a more personal way in your head, but movies are very concrete and plain.

But I think it would be great to see Itoi make a movie from the ground up, unrelated to mother, but still having all of those great endearing qualities we expect from him.

If it were made though, casting would be super easy. After all, the characters are based on stereotypical American kid archetypes. There are armies of teenage boys with brown bowl cuts out there in Hollywood. 🙂

Uh I thought the mother saga was a movie. They did make a dvd. If you were hoping for a better one, you won’t get it. No regular person could afford to have dungeon man in their movie! Movies are never better than originals, and mother wouldn’t be an exception

@Axl: Oh don’t be so dull. Anything is possible! 😉

But..it will take a miracle..

Needed more EarthBound related footage…

lame

Interesting script you have there for Earthbound, might have to give it a read and see if it’s worth filming! 😉

Excuse me my good people. I am stuck in my research. Perhaps one of you good gentlemen can help me. I received an interesting email a couple days ago that I cannot decipher. the email goes as this.

UTYB3

VbYqlz40k18

Any leads would be appreciated.

Dr. Andonuts

@Dr. Andonuts

Heh, neat 😀

Have you solved this puzzle? I need this information. If possible, you may reveal this information publicly.

Did I see a Diary of a Wimpy Kid clip in the video?

Oh cool, it comes out right after my birthday!
THAT’LL be a birthday present and a half!

I think an EarthBound movie is slightly possible. At least, that’s what I started to think after learning that an official Animal Crossing movie exists.

Wow, awesome! I also want to thank the people who mentioned my screenplay. That warms my heart 🙂

About the screenplay: Does anyone know how tosubmit it to a producer or something?

Anonymous, that is indeed, Gregory Heffley there

No comment…

Not good but not bad meh

If they do a movie, they might base it off the light novels.