After a few empty attempts at an adaptation, Nintendo video game classic The Legend of Zelda seems to have found its proverbial ruby in a pot, as Sony Pictures Entertainment and the game company have announced a live-action feature film following Link’s adventures is now in development. Director Wes Ball (Maze Runner trilogy, upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) will be at the helm.
Sony will distribute the pic, which will be produced by Nintendo and Avi Arad’s Arad Productions, co-financed by Sony and Nintendo. According to Hollywood Reporter, the franchise’s co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Representative Director & Fellow at Nintendo, shared he and blockbuster producer Arad (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Advnetures) have been working on a live-action movie concept “for many years now.”
Created by Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, the first The Legend of Zelda game arrived in 1986. The action-adventure titles center on the elf-like Hylian hero, Link, and the divinity-descended Princess Zelda as they fight to protect Hyrule — mainly from a warlord/demon king called Ganon who seeks to use the sacred relic known as the Triforce to remake the world.
The games have been perpetual hits, publishing over 20 original and re-release titles. The most recent entry, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was released this May and sold over 19.5 million copies by September, making it one of the year’s best-selling games.
The Legend of Zelda was adapted into a 13-episode animated TV series from DIC in 1989. A previously reported live-action series with Netflix as well as a CG-animated feature pitch from Imagi (TMNT, Astro Boy) were previously pulled by Nintendo. Rumors this summer of a follow-up deal between The Super Mario Bros. Movie studio Illumination and Nintendo to produce a Zelda animated movie were later refuted by studio CEO Chris Meledandri.
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