A ‘Legend Of Zelda’ Live-Action Pic Is Reportedly In The Works And People Are Already Trying To Cast It

Time was that video game movies were cursed. Remember 1993’s Super Mario Bros., starring an appalled Bob Hoskins Jump three decades to the present and Hollywood has finally (mostly) figured out how to make the genre work. The biggest grosser that’s not Barbie is, as it happens, the second stab at a Super Mario Bros. movie. Somehow it took about six months for Nintendo to greenlit a big screen take on another of their deathless franchises. That’s right, there’s finally going to be a Legend of Zelda movie. And people are already trying to cast it.

— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) November 7, 2023

Per Variety, on Tuesday gaming legend and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto took to social media to reveal that, after working on a live-action Zelda movie “for many years,” he’s teaming with super-producer Avi Arad (of, among others, the last three iterations of the live-action Spider-Man) to belatedly make it a reality. Miyamoto warned Zelda fans that it “will take time until its completion,” but that the wheels are officially in motion.

The Legend of Zelda movie even already has a director: Wes Ball, of the Maze Runner trilogy and the forthcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Details are thin on the ground, though based on an interview Miyamoto did with Variety earlier this year, maybe don’t expect it to be a straight-up take on the 1986 original. “Just following the plot points of the video games will never work as a movie,” he said, arguing that the games’ plots are all about the player moving through a world. “Without the involvement of the player, it won’t meet expectations.”

Also up in the air Who will play hero Link, or baddie Ganon, or the titular absconded princess Zelda. But when the news broke, a lot of people assumed the role would go to cinema’s most popular young actor, Tom Holland.

— Cris Parker (@3CFilmss) November 7, 2023

Under Sony huh. Watch it star Tom Holland and half the internet kills themselves https://t.co/2GASyRwQ2Q

— Cody (@AltHistCody) November 7, 2023

tom holland getting casted as link is now a possibility and that’s terrifying https://t.co/M0irt23zGw