It feels like a rare treat for a Nintendo Direct to take us by surprise, now that the events are routinely being pre-empted by leakers. This latest, just revealed by Nintendo to take place on January 25 at 9 a.m. ET (thanks Gematsu), snuck up on me. It’s a shame it’s just for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, rather than meeting our desperate need for Switch 2 game news, but at least it means we’ll get to see Shigeru Miyamoto being all delightfully excited.
Yes, January 25 is a Sunday, which is a weird choice for a Direct. All right-minded games and film journalists are in bed at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning, so expect some bleary-eyed coverage of the new footage and details being revealed ahead of the movie’s April 3 release.
Join us on Sunday, Jan 25, at 6am PT for the #NintendoDirect featuring an exclusive look at The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Please note that no game information will be included in this presentation.
Watch here: https://t.co/gTC114mMLz pic.twitter.com/4DOoFU1fFJ
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) January 23, 2026
Nintendo says this will feature “an exclusive look at The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” but gives no more information than that. So far we’ve seen a very limited amount of the movie, mostly sticking to a single scene of Mario and Luigi’s frustrating conversation with a miniature Bowser in his teeny castle. Aside from the reveal of Rosalina, weirdly little has been shown of a movie that’s due out in just over two months.
The original 2023 Super Mario Bros. Movie may not have been particularly good, but it was wildly successful. Miyamoto even claimed the negative reviews helped the movie succeed. Nintendo and Illumination are presumably feeling very confident of a similar success for the sequel, which will hopefully make better use of the splendid Mario Galaxy setting than first movie did of its Mushroom Kingdom hodgepodge.
Following Sunday’s Direct, we can expect promotion for the animated movie to really ramp up, although presumably continuing to try to feature Chris Pratt’s dull-ass voice as little as possible.