A live-action Legend of Zelda movie is in the works

Hyrulians prepare yourselves: Nintendo have announced that they’re developing a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie. 

As per a statement shared by Nintendo Japan, Zelda creator and Nintendo creative fellow Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that he was producing the film alongside Avi Arad, Chairman of Arad Productions Inc, who have produced a number of films, including Spider-Man: Homecoming and the adaptation of Sony PlayStation’s hit series Uncharted.

In a thread on X, Miyamoto said that he had been working on the film for “many years now” and that “we have now officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production”. The film will be co-financed by both Nintendo and Sony Pictures Entertainment, who will also handle the theatrical distribution.

The announcement of a live-action The Legend of Zelda film comes following Nintendo’s successful steps into movie-making with 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie. The film broke multiple box office records, becoming the highest-grossing film based on a video game. 

Nintendo has previously been reluctant to produce films based on their franchises. In 1993, the failure of the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie, which starred Bob Hoskins as the titular plumber, led the Japanese gaming giant to swear off ever producing a live-action movie again. In 2019, however, the company seemed to relax a little with the release of the live-action Pokémon movie, Detective Pikachu. 

According to a report by Deadline, the filmmaker behind The Maze Runner series and the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Wes Ball, will direct the Zelda movie, with Jurassic World scribe Derek Connolly penning the screenplay. 

As Miyamoto noted in his posts on X, the film is still in early development. Nevertheless, on social media, people have begun putting together their dream castings for who should play Link and Princess Zelda, with both Tom Holland and Hunter Schafer proving popular choices for each character respectively. 

Of course, Zelda remains one of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises, with the two latest entries in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, regularly cited as two of the best video games ever made. 

Those two games are famed for their unique cell-shaded art style. How Hyrule will be brought to life in a live-action movie, however, is unclear. Let’s just hope they retain the swole and sexy Ganon from Tears of the Kingdom.

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