Nintendo and Sony Pictures are making a live-action film of the beloved video game series The Legend of Zelda.
Renowned video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and Avi Arad of the Spider-Man trilogy will co-produce, with The Maze Runner’s Wes Ball directing.
There is no word yet on who will make up the cast, or the plot of the film.
In a post on Nintendo’s Japanese account on X, Mr Miyamoto revealed that he has been working on the film with Arad for some time.
He said that the development of the film has started, with Nintendo heavily involved in the production.
“It will take time until its completion, but I hope you look forward to seeing it,” he wrote to fans.
It is Nintendo’s second most successful franchise after Super Mario, having sold about 150 million copies since its debut in 1986.
Its latest iteration, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, sold 10 million copies in three days when it was released last May, making it the fastest-selling Zelda game of all time.
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Its predecessor Breath of the Wild is the best-selling game in the series, having sold an estimated 30 million copies overall.
The forthcoming film comes during a renaissance for gaming films, which were once thought to be almost guaranteed flops.
In the 90s, film adaptations of popular video games such as Super Mario Bros and Mortal Kombat were critical and commercial failures when they were released.
But Nintendo’s star-studded Super Mario Bros Movie, which was released earlier this year, became one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, earning more than $1bn (£800m) at the box office.
While Mario was the most successful, it is not a one-off.
Films based on Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, starring Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz and James Marsden, have made hundreds of millions in box office takings, and Nintendo’s Detective Pikachu, starring Ryan Reynolds as the titular Pokémon, was a box office hit too.
The success of these movies will likely have spurred Nintendo to venture into film once again, with veteran producer Avi Arad at the helm.
Mr Arad has been responsible for most of the Spider-Man films since 2002, having previously led Marvel Studios.
He has a solid track record in video games too, having produced the 2022 Uncharted film starring Tom Holland – based on the massively popular video game series – which took $400m at the box office.
This will be the first attempt to make a Zelda film, though the franchise previously had an animated TV series in 1989.
Netflix was later rumoured to be developing a new Zelda series in 2015 but nothing was ever released.
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Author: Nicholas Yong & Tom Gerken
