In a completely unexpected announcement, a live-action Legend of Zelda movie has been confirmed to be in the works by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself. The official Nintendo X account posted the following message regarding the project:
Shigeru Miyamoto has been working closely on a movie adaption for the beloved series alongside Avi Arad, an Israeli-American producer who has played a role in many popular superhero films, including the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movies, Iron Man, as well as video game adaptations like Uncharted.
According to the Nintendo press release, Wes Ball is on-hand to direct the movie, who directed the Maze Runner movies. No information has been made on which actors will appear in the film as of this writing and there is no release date. Sony Pictures will help finance the movie and handle theatrical distribution.
After the massive success that was The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it is not surprising whatsoever that the Zelda series would get the next film adaptation. It is the second-most notorious series for Nintendo, which has been making more efforts to represent its IP outside of games in recent years.
Speaking speculatively, we would imagine The Legend of Zelda Movie will not follow the events of any particular game but rather make a new story. It is very rare for any of the Zelda games to be a direct sequel like Tears of the Kingdom was for Breath of the Wild, so an original story makes sense here.
It is time for the speculation to begin on who will star as Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf. The Mario Bros. Movie was filled with high-profile actors, but that was an animated movie. With this one being live-action, these characters will need to at least somewhat resemble the in-game characters for people to buy in like they did Mario.
