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What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Did Nintendo Buy The Rights To A Mario Porn Movie?
A recent post on Reddit's r/interestingasfuck and a Snopes article have re-surfaced a long-standing internet rumor about a couple ancient porn movies inspired by Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. According to lore, Nintendo owns the distribution rights to two porn movies: Super Hornio Brothers and Super Hornio Brothers 2. The Big N bought the rights, it is said, to keep the movies from being distributed, and thus besmirching Nintendo's good name.
Despite widely held belief on the internet, there's no hard proof that Nintendo had anything to do with the these movies, let alone owns them. The Super Hornio movies are unavailable for streaming or purchase, and it's possible this is because Nintendo owns the rights and are keeping them from being seen, but there are other possibilities as well.
The story of Super Hornio BrothersBack in 2008, posters on the Something Awful forum started searching for evidence of a Super Mario porn parody, based on a few commenters' murky memories of having seen it. There was so little information about the movie online, the initial speculation was that it was a hoax or a Mandela effect created by misremembering. But internet researchers are a tenacious horde, and by June 2009, they'd discovered there were actually two Super Hornio Brothers movies. Footage from VHS tapes was digitized and uploaded onto the internet.
Directed by Buck Adams and starring Ron Jeremy as Squeegie Hornio and TT Boy as his brother Ornio Hornio, Super Hornio Brothers told the story of a pair of plumbers who are transported into a computer—a sexy computer. You can watch all of the non-sex scenes on YouTube if you're curious, and check out the cover art too.
This is the part where Nintendo supposedly gets involvedWith the films located, the focus of the internet's investigation changed to "why were they so hard to find?"
Distributing older pornographic movies on the internet has been a thing basically since there was a commercial internet. Hundreds of films starring Ron Jeremy were (and still are) distributed by a company called Hot Movies. (Warning: These links are VERY not work safe.) On the Hot Movies site, you can stream porn parodies of The Brady Bunch, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and The Graduate as well as hundreds of other parodies and movies starring Ron Jeremy, but you cannot stream Super Hornio Brothers there, or anywhere else. So what's going on?
According to a statement posted on Jeremy's website (archived here) this is because, "After Super Hornio Brothers was produced, the Nintendo corporation bought the rights to the films in order to halt their distribution indefinitely."
This seems to be the source of the internet rumor, but a porn star who starred in hundreds of films recalling specific details about the distribution of a then 20-year-old video is not enough evidence to say anything for certain. No other source has backed up Jeremy's assertion. Nintendo isn't commenting, and enough time has passed that tracking down anyone who was involved with the business side of the movie seems unlikely.
The legal trail of the Super Hornio moviesAccording to the U.S. Copyright Office database, the title "Super Hornio" for a VHS tape was registered in 1993 to "Midnight Video." And that's where the trail stops.
Nintendo is not listed as the copyright holder of Super Hornio, but that doesn't disprove the rumor. "It's possible that there was some assignment of either the copyright or trademark rights involved," says Wesley Johnson, a Chicago-based copyright attorney. "You can change the registration information at the copyright office, but you don't have to." (Full disclosure: Johnson is my brother, which is why he's so patient with my ridiculous questions.)
Why there may never be a porn with a name like "Super Hornio Brothers" againPorn companies have a long history of releasing "parodies" of mainstream entertainment, and there's a long history of lawsuits over it, because just calling your porn movie a "parody" doesn't provide automatic legal protection. Sadly, this eventually put a damper on giving porn movies funny names like Bonan the Barbarian and Super Hornio Brothers. "The industry was particularly leery of companies coming after the makers of porn parodies between 2006 and 2015. So porn producers responded by over emphasizing disclaimers and giving porn movies names like This Ain't Roseanne XXX," pornography journalist and director (NSFW LINK) Gram Ponante said. "My parody, made in 2009, was simple and elegant: Facts of Life: A Porn Parody; possibly the greatest film of all time."
But even emblazoning your movie with a title like "this is porn, not (BIG ENTERTAINMENT PROPERTY)" doesn't guarantee a movie will be legally regarded as parody. It didn't work for the producers of Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation for instance. Whenever anyone releases a creative work inspired by existing intellectual property, they are taking the risk that someone will care enough to file a lawsuit and/or threaten one. And that risk might not have been worth taking for the producers of Super Hornio Brothers.
The power of a legal threat"The word 'Hornio' does not appear in any published legal case in the United States," Johnson said, "but that doesn't mean there was no legal interaction between Nintendo and the producers. Nintendo could have threatened legal action if they didn't pull it from circulation, and there wouldn't be a public record."
That hypothetical legal threat might have been enough to keep Hornio's producers from releasing the movie by itself. Maybe the expense of a court case and a possible loss wasn't worth it to Hornio's producers. Porn is a volume business, so why take a risk when you can just release another movie?
What if Nintendo had nothing to do with it at all?There's a very good chance that Nintendo wasn't involved in any legal imbroglio that might have prevented Super Hornio Brothers from being released. The porn was produced in 1993, the same year that Super Mario Bros., the movie, was released, and the parody is based on the movie more than the video games.
"I've never heard of a movie studio making a movie without exclusive rights to make the movie," Johnson says. So if any mainstream company either threatened the producers of Super Hornio Brothers or bought the rights to the movie, it could also have been Lightmotive, who bought temporary movie rights to Nintendo's characters (according to Wikipedia) instead of Nintendo. Or the studio that released Super Mario Bros. Or some other entity—rights ownership is complicated.
How to find out for sure whether Nintendo owns "Super Hornio" with this one cool trickI don't like ending things without a definite answer, so I'll leave you with a call to action instead. I asked Wesley Johnson how I could get a final answer as to whether Nintendo owns the Super Hornio porn movies, and he said: "Obtain a copy of the full movie. Sell it on a website. Wait to see who sues you."
I'm obviously not going to do this—I've been told it could be costly and result in severe consequences—but if you want this mystery solved forever, that's my best advice.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of Recent Video Game Adaptations
From three simple words delivered by celebrity actor Jack Black, "I am Steve," the recently released "A Minecraft Movie" trailer spawned a plethora of internet memes rooted in scorn, sarcasm or just plain parody.
The film is slated to release in theaters on April 4, 2025, but many are already anticipating it will be a financial flop for Warner Bros. With a nearly decade-long troubled production that has been passed through the hands of several directors, "A Minecraft Movie" is not a rarity in the genre of video game to silver-screen adaptations.
That is, adaptations that are in my opinion travesties to the human senses.
In the same vein, "Borderlands" (2024) cannot be described as anything other than a failure of the highest caliber.
Similar to "A Minecraft Movie," "Borderlands" faced nearly 10 years of development — consisting of multiple scripts being written, rewritten and several reshoots when the project actually started rolling.
As a result, "Borderlands" grossed approximately $30.9 million worldwide against a reported $145 million budget, including marketing and distribution costs.
People — die-hard fans and casual movie-goers alike — were not even hate-watching the film; they were simply not going to see it.
A large point of contention between these two adaptations — "A Minecraft Movie" and "Borderlands" — was the casting choices. With household names such as Jack Black, Jason Momoa and Jennifer Coolidge filling out the roster of "A Minecraft Movie" and Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart and Jack Black (again) starring in "Borderlands", why have the actors attached to these projects been one of the biggest bits of criticism in the conversation?
In an attempt to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, many studios seem to seek out as many celebrities as possible who are willing to sign on to an adaptation of a franchise they have probably never heard of. Reportedly, A-list celebrities command large paychecks which inevitably carve out a large portion of a budget that is most likely already stretched pretty thin.
And, in the end, the films do not perform well anyway. Star-studded does not equal success.
Recently, only a few video game-to-film adaptations have proven successful — in the critical and commercial sense.
"Arcane: League of Legends" (2021), "The Last of Us" (2023) and "Five Nights at Freddy's" (2023) all garnered more than enough praise and profit to greenlight seasons twos and sequels, each of which are currently in varying stages of development.
"Arcane: League of Legends", created by French animation studio Fortiche in collaboration with Riot Games, was met with overwhelming acclaim for its writing, characters and stunningly stylish combination of 2D and 3D animation. The show's second season is scheduled to be released on Netflix in three parts — similar to its first season — with Act I arriving on Nov. 9.
"The Last of Us" (2023) was star-studded in its own right with leads Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
"Arcane" and "The Last of Us" differ in how much they rely on their respective source material. "Arcane" originates from "League of Legends", an online player-versus-player game that mostly lacks any substantial story to keep up with. "The Last of Us" (2023) follows the 2013 single-player game's story almost to-a-T.
"Five Nights at Freddy's" (2023), which stems from an indie game franchise with a notoriously convoluted amount of lore, roughly did its own thing as a movie adaptation and was able to stand on its own in that way.
Similarly, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (2023) was able to flourish with the freedom of next-to-no plot limitations and its own iconic characters, becoming the second highest-grossing film of the year with a voice cast of well-known celebrities including Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy and Jack Black (again).
The majority of success stories in the video game to theater (or streaming) screen adaptation scene have been in the last decade — or even just in the last five years. With both Steam and Playstation reporting record highs in concurrent players and monthly active users in 2023, the rise in popularity of video game adaptations could be partly attributed to the fact that gaming is becoming a much more mainstream hobby.
There is certainly a market of gamers who would jump for joy at the opportunity to see their favorite characters and series come to life on the big screen. However, Hollywood has a track record of hits and misses with the whole "adapting it well" part.
Video game adaptations have never really been able to catch a break in terms of what the public seems to want or not want, judging by the history of successes and failures.
Should they cast celebrities because "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" worked or not cast celebrities because of what happened to "Borderlands"?
Should they exercise creative freedom with storytelling like "Arcane" or follow the source material as closely as possible like "The Last of Us"? However, both of those series proved successful — so which is the right course of action?
It certainly is not an enviable position to be in. With dozens of announced video game adaptations at various or unknown stages of production, fans spanning the entire spectrum of gaming will just have to wait with bated breath until they are either delighted or disappointed by what they witness.
Did Nintendo Buy All Rights To 'Super Hornio Brothers' Adult Films?
Originally released in 1985, Super Mario Bros. And successive games in the series have maintained a stronghold in the gaming world in the decades since. From movies and merchandise to a real-life "world" opening in 2025, there is no doubt the digital brothers infiltrated the world of pop culture — and, judging by long-standing internet scuttlebutt, the adult film industry as well.
A post (archived) on Reddit on Sept. 12, 2024, claimed Nintendo owned the rights to two pornographic movies starring Ron Jeremy as the main character, Mario. At the time of this writing, the post had received 14,000 upvotes.
(Reddit/MEMEY_IFUNNY)
Online Records and Interviews Indicate the Movies ExistedThe image shown in the Reddit post above is actually the movie poster from the 1993 live-action movie "Super Mario Bros.," produced by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. Collectibles auctioneer Heritage Auctions sold a copy of the poster in 2008.
Following the release of the 1993 film, the story goes, porn director Buck Adams made a two-part pornographic adaptation of the film.
The Movie Database — an online, user-editable database — describes the plot of "Super Hornio Brothers" as follows:
A power surge sends whacked out computer programmer Squeegie Hornio and his brother Ornio into cyberspace where they meet up with, have sex with, and even fight, a variety of characters from a popular video game. Hornio Brothers Squeegie and Ornio fight to find their way out of cyberspace after a power surge lands them inside a computer game.
Its sequel, Super Hornio Brothers II, picked up where the first installment left off:
Hornio Brothers Squeegie and Ornio fight to find their way out of cyberspace after a power surge lands them inside a computer game.
The TMDB website features photographs of what appears to be VHS tape covers:
(TMBD)
Internet lore holds Nintendo bought the rights to the "Super Hornio Brothers" films immediately after their production "in order to halt any and all distribution of the two films," according to the entertainment website Comicbook. Comic Book Resources, an online discussion site, echoes this story, but neither provides conclusive evidence corroborating the films' existence.
In fact, aside from the gossip in online forums and anecdotal descriptions, Snopes was unable to find evidence to conclusively prove the films existed or that Nintendo secured all rights to them.
Something Awful, a parody and humor website, described "The Super Hornio Brothers Saga" in a post published on June 25, 2009, and posted a clip of the film's introduction to YouTube.
In 2014, a user shared photographs said to show the VHS to a Something Awful forum.
In September 2015, Vice published an interview with Jeremy in which the adult film star confirmed the existence of the films and described making them:
VICE: You've done thousands of movies. Do you remember Super Hornio Brothers?Ron Jeremy: Yeah! Buck Adams did a great job. He wanted to simulate the actual show. I had never seen the video game—I don't play them at all, except when I go to Hugh Hefner's mansion. He has some video games in the back room. Other than that, I never play video games ever. I think they're boring. As a former schoolteacher, Asians are kicking our ass! While our kids are drinking beer, and playing video games, Asians are getting high SAT scores. If you look at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, it's almost all Asian and Scandinavian. [Note: This isn't true.] Not a lot of Americans there, and it's on our soil. It's just weird. Nothing wrong with video games recreationally, but our kids are living on it. You know, not even reading books anymore.
What did you find especially good about the job Buck Adams did?He tried very hard to simulate the basic show. Buck knew Mario Brothers inside and out. I've been told before that I look like one of the brothers. They've made jokes about it. I even did layouts in magazines where I had to impersonate that, with a plunger in one hand, overalls, a big, big mustache. Pretty funny, you know? He had good attention to detail. It was one of his better videos. He added that noise when I walked, you know? (makes a video-gamey boink-boink-boink sound) Plus it had good sex scenes. Pretty basic thing if you're gonna watch an adult movie. That's gotta be hot too.
It was one of his really, really better gigs. I'm pretty sure it spawned a sequel.
Snopes also found a record in the U.S. Copyright Office database for a "Super Hornio Brothers" videocassette published on Nov. 11, 2020. The registered copyright claimant was "Midnight Video." There was no mention of Nintendo on the registration.
For this reasons, we believe that it is true Adams directed the "Super Hornio Brothers" films and that Jeremy starred in them.
Nintendo's Supposed Ownership of 'Hornio' Movie Rights UnverifiedThe existence of the adult-themed "Hornio Brothers" films has been described as an "internet legend." Snopes reached out to Nintendo for confirmation on whether the company owned "Super Hornio Brothers" rights, but our requests went unanswered.
The claim Nintendo owns the rights appears to have originated on a now-deleted (though archived) version of Jeremy's website:
Some of you may be wondering why it is that we, Ron Jeremy's Official Website, do not offer Super Hornio Brothers or Super Hornio Brothers 2 within our massive library of Ron Jeremy videos. The simple answer is "Nintendo". After Super Hornio Brothers was produced, the Nintendo corporation bought the rights to the films in order to halt their distribution indefinitely. Otherwise, we would 100% offer up Super Hornio Brothers for streaming glory. As you can see from the edited highlight reel above, it is a classic hilarious Ron Jeremy porn parody.
In his Vice interview, Jeremy credited a company known as "Hot Movies" with "keeping films alive nowadays." Snopes contacted an adult website associated with the name to determine if there was indeed any affiliation.Although Jeremy's website did address the rumor that Nintendo bought the rights to the films, Snopes was unable to conclusively prove the rumor true or false.
We will update this article accordingly.
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Cronin, Brian. "Movie Legends RevealedNintendo Owns Rights to 'Super Mario Bros.' Porn Parody?" CBR, 2 Oct. 2013, https://www.Cbr.Com/movie-legends-revealed-nintendo-owns-rights-to-super-mario-bros-porn-parody/.
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(NSFW) Super Hornio Bros VHS Still-in-Box! - The Something Awful Forums. 30 Oct. 2014, https://web.Archive.Org/web/20141030041024/http://forums.Somethingawful.Com/showthread.Php?Threadid=3676585.
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Super Mario - My Nintendo Store - Nintendo Official Site. Https://www.Nintendo.Com/us/store/characters/mario/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
Super Mario Bros. (Video Game 1985) - Release Info - IMDb. Www.Imdb.Com, https://www.Imdb.Com/title/tt0177266/releaseinfo/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
The Official Home of Super Mario™. Https://www.Nintendo.Com/au/mario/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie. 2 Mar. 2023, https://www.Uphe.Com/movies/the-super-mario-bros-movie.
---. Directed by Aaron Horvath et al., Universal Pictures, Nintendo, Illumination Entertainment, 2023.
"Universal Orlando." Universal Orlando Resort, https://www.Universalorlando.Com/web/en/us/epic-universe/worlds/super-nintendo-world. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
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