Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto has given some clarity on the production of The Legend of Zelda movie. Nintendo is a company that doesn’t really bend to trends very easily. It hasn’t gotten in on the VR wave, it didn’t chase the battle royale scene really, and it ultimately makes what it wants to make. However, Nintendo has decided to start adapting its properties into films, something many of us thought would probably never happen. Video game movies and shows are becoming more and more prevalent as things like The Last of Us prove studios can work in tandem with the developers to create faithful, but mass appeal adaptations.
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Earlier this week, it was confirmed The Legend of Zelda would be getting a live action film courtesy of director Wes Ball and Sony. Nintendo will finance half of the film’s production and Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed at the time it had been in the works for years at that point. As of right now, there is no cast, but it sounds like Nintendo is confident in in after releasing The Super Mario Bros. Movie earlier this year. Speaking during a Q&A section of Nintendo’s financial earnings call, Miyamoto stated that he’d been working on The Legend of Zelda film for ten years and are working hard to produce something that can match the high expectations fans have.
“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,” said Miyamoto. With this challenge in mind, I have been discussing this project with Avi Arad, Chairman of Arad Productions Inc., for about 10 years. 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. 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. […] We hope to release something good that will meet everyone’s expectations, so please look forward to it.”
As of right now, Nintendo has yet to address when the movie will release, who will star in it, or if it will directly adapt any of the games. The Super Mario Bros. Movie didn’t adapt any games directly, but it’s possible Zelda will since it is far more story driven than the Mario franchise.
[H/T Nintendo Everything]
