Glen Powell Had No Idea Nintendo Was Already Planning His Dream Role For Star Fox Film

One of the biggest surprises in the new movie, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, was Glen Powell voicing Fox McCloud. The real story isn’t just that he landed the role; it’s how he got the role and how his passion for McCloud played a part.

After the movie raked in over $1.3 billion at the box office, Powell personally contacted Illumination’s CEO Chris Meledandri with an offer to take on a potential Star Fox film. Meledandri and Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, however, were already discussing incorporating Fox McCloud into the sequel to Galaxy. “Glen Powell’s dream was to one day make a Star Fox movie,” Meledandri told Forbes. “I am hearing all of this as I’m thinking, he has NO IDEA that myself and Miyamoto-san are discussing putting Star Fox into this next movie… Glen is clearly very passionate about it.”

Miyamoto noted that Illumination first brought the Star Fox crossover idea to him. “When I got the proposal from Chris about including Star Fox, in general, from Nintendo’s perspective, we tend to avoid mixing IPs. With that said, though, as the creator of Star Fox and this movie taking place in space, I felt that I wanted to see that. I wanted to see what it would be like, but I also felt that there may be significant resistance internally about that idea, so after I got this proposal, I contacted the necessary parties involved and started my lobbying activity here at Nintendo.”

Fox doesn’t just have a small cameo in the new movie; he’s a major supporting character in the second half of the film. He had roughly the same screen time as Rosalina, around whom the whole movie is based. He lands in Mario’s universe through Arwing’s warp drive malfunction.

Nintendo is expanding its cinematic universe, and Fox McCloud’s appearance is proof of it. He is the first non-Mario Nintendo character to play a big role in this franchise. The movie grossed $370 million worldwide in its opening weekend.