Nintendo representative director and development legend Shigeru Miyamoto has been discussing The Legend of Zelda live action movie for 10 years.
Miyamoto said during a Nintendo investor question and answer segment that he and fellow producer Avi Arad, chairman of Arad Productions and former founder and CEO of Marvel Studios, have been planning the Zelda film for a long time but admitted making it a success will still be “an extremely high hurdle” to overcome.
“Regarding the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, I know we face an extremely high hurdle in producing a film that will not disappoint the global fan base,” Miyamoto said. “With this challenge in mind, I have been discussing this project with Avi Arad, chairman of Arad Productions, for about 10 years.”
Nintendo supporting the film bodes well though, Miyamoto said, as movies require the same level of attention and commitment as video games. Considering the last two Zelda games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, are both considered among the best games of all time, bringing forward the same development philosophy to the film is encouraging.
“Movies are just like games in that you need to spend a lot of time working on them until you get to something you’re satisfied with,” Miyamoto continued.
“Movies therefore need sponsors who can lend their full support until completion. For the production of our movies, Nintendo itself acts as a sponsor. To produce the movie, we were able to assemble a group of people who are willing to commit time to the production until we come up with something we feel confident about.”
Sony Pictures Entertainment is co-financing the Zelda film with Nintendo and will also handle theatrical distribution. The Maze Runner director Wes Ball is set to direct, while Jurassic World writer Derek Connolly is reportedly writing the script.
Arad, meanwhile, is credited as producing numerous successful films including recent Spider-Man hits Across the Spider-Verse, Into the Spider-Verse, No Way Home, Far From Home, and Homecoming.
Nintendo itself found huge success with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Not only did it earn great reviews, but the film jumped to more than $1 billion at the global box office and became the highest grossing film based on a video game and second highest grossing animated film of all time. The handful of fans who didn’t see The Super Mario Bros. Movie in cinemas can soon watch it on Netflix too.
No real story or casting details have emerged about the Zelda movie yet, though its director likely has a lot of ideas given he posted on X/Twitter about the film 13 years ago. Nintendo only announced it on November 7, of course, so it will be a while before we do hear more.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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