Nintendo is officially developing a live-action Legend Of Zelda movie
Wes Ball, director of the Maze Runner series, is already attached to direct
Well, Nintendo’s officially got the movie bug. After The Super Mario Bros. Movie made a ton of money earlier this year, the legendary video game developer has accepted the value in farming out its iconic franchises to Hollywood—not counting the monsters from Pokémon, which are their own thing. As announced this evening, Nintendo is beginning development on a live-action Legend Of Zelda movie, with series co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto and regular Hollywood franchise guy Avi Arad on board as producers. Wes Ball, director of the new Planet Of the Apes movie that seemingly came out of nowhere last week (plus the Maze Runner movies), is already attached to direct.
And, in a fun detail that might make video game fans do a double-take, the film will be co-financed by Nintendo and Sony Pictures, with Nintendo footing more than half of the bill and Sony—the PlayStation company, even if that’s a totally different division—handling worldwide distribution.
That’s pretty much all we know, but it seems at least mildly encouraging that Nintendo is very involved. The company has a reputation for being very precious with its many little guys, and while the distracting needle-drops and Chris Pratt stuff in the Mario movie was a little jarring, it did at least feel a whole lot like a real Super Mario thing. That’ll be harder to pull off with Zelda, especially in live-action, but hopefully everyone here knows what they’re doing. (That hope is based largely on the assumption that nobody involved could possibly think that Chris Pratt should play Link.)
Then again, he does sometimes have blonde-ish hair, and Link famously never really speaks anyway… How is Pratt with a sword? And how does he look in a little green tunic with a long hat? We might be onto something here….