How Glen Powell’s Star Fox Movie Pitch Led to Super Mario Galaxy Role

Glen Powell pitched a Star Fox film before landing a role in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

How did Glen Powell get to voice Fox McCloud in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie?

After the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, many actors reached out to Illumination’s Chris Meledandri about their enthusiasm for Nintendo characters. One of those calls came from Powell, who was interested in Fox McCloud and a potential Star Fox movie. Powell had no idea that Meledandri had plans to include the character in the sequel.

“When we were working on the first movie, we began to get phone calls from actors. They started communicating their enthusiasm. After the first movie was done, there were two phone calls that came from actors expressing incredible conviction and passion about being involved with Nintendo, and one of them was from Glen Powell,” Meledandri told Forbes. “He explained that we had to understand how deeply he loved the character of Fox McCloud. His dream was one day to be part of a Star Fox movie. I’m listening to this going, ‘He has no idea that Miyamoto-san and I are talking about Star Fox being in this new movie,’ and Glen is expressing this passion for this.”

As fate would have it, Meledandri found his Fox McCloud with Powell. However, Meledandri wanted to keep Powell’s casting a secret.

“What happened was that after we spoke about it, we had decided we wanted Star Fox to appear in this new movie as a surprise. When I called Glen back, I said, ‘Look, I want you to have a conversation, but it has to be completely secret, you cannot talk it to anyone’, as no one knew this character would be so close to this movie. On top of that, we felt that there was a Glen Powell kind of attitude to the character, and he feels perfectly suited to that role. It was one of those gifts.”

Powell joins the cast of The Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie, which includes Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr., Donald Glover as Yoshi, Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek, Luis Guzman as Wart, Issa Rae as Honey Queen, and Brie Larson as Princess Rosalina.

Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic direct The Super Mario Galaxy Movie from a screenplay by Matthew Fogel. Meledandri and Nintendo‘s Shigeru Miyamoto are producers.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opens in theaters on April 1, 2026.

Source: Comingsoon.net