According to Japanese news agencies Sponichi and Yahoo! Japan, Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo senior advisor and former president of Nintendo Co., Ltd., said he would like the company to look into the production of movie animation. He will present the idea to the Nintendo board of directors on October 29. Yamauchi feels that making games is similar to movie making.
Yamauchi said that he would like the first film to cover a Japanese poet who appears in "Ogura Hyakunin Isshu," an ancient anthology of 100 poems by 100 different poets written in the 7th and 13th centuries. In November 2003, Yamauchi became the president and chief financial sponsor of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu Project foundation, a group dedicated to promoting and preserving the "Ogura Hyakunin Isshu".