Zelda fans already have an amazing new game with “Tears of the Kingdom” this year, but Nintendo just released another exciting tidbit of news: the gaming giant is working on a live action movie based on the Legend of Zelda franchise.
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the 37-year-old franchise, announced the news this afternoon.
“I have been working on The Legend of Zelda live-action movie for many years now with Avi Arad-san, who has created many mega hit movies,” he wrote to X in a statement translated from Japanese. “I asked Avi-san to produce this film with me and now we have officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production. It will take time to complete, but I hope you can’t wait to see it.”
Avi Arad has produced films such as “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, along with dozens of other Marvel films.
Although unexpected, this move makes a lot of sense for Nintendo. Although Link’s story has been unfolding for decades, the franchise is hotter than ever. Breath of the Wild, the 2017 game released on Nintendo Switch, has been hailed by fans and critics alike as one of the best video games of all time (more realistically, it’s one of the best games released on Nintendo Switch, which is still high praise). When the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, was released earlier this year, it somehow managed to live up to huge fan expectations, selling 20 million copies from May to September.
So if Nintendo saw fit to make a movie about Mario, a working-class plumber, why not tell the story of Link, a legendary hero that spans time and space?
When Nintendo announced it was making “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” a few years ago, fans seemed a little jaded — and also confused about the casting of Chris Pratt as Mario. But the film was shockingly successful, even for a product built on such an iconic IP. The film grossed more than $1.3 billion, surpassing “Frozen” as the second highest grossing animated film ever (“Frozen II” holds the crown). The Pokémon franchise, another Nintendo cash cow, has been churning out movies and TV shows at breakneck speed for decades, even casting Ryan Gosling as Pikachu… So why not give Link the spotlight this time?
We just hope Chris Pratt doesn’t audition to play Link.
