It’s official, The Legend of Zelda live action film is now in development.
The iconic Nintendo game designer and The Legend of Zelda co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto took to the company’s official X account to confirm the news. He opened with: “This is Miyamoto. I have been working on the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda for many years now with Avi Arad-san, who has produced many mega hit films.”
The announcement comes six months after the release of one of the most anticipated titles in the beloved franchise’s 37-year run, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Having sold more than 10 million copies in its first three days of release and 18.51 million copies by June, Tears of the Kingdom currently sits as the best selling game of 2023 and is already one of the Nintendo Switch’s highest selling games of all time.
American filmmaker Wes Ball, who previously directed The Maze Runner trilogy and the forthcoming 2024 film Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, is slated to directed the Zelda adaptation. Avi Arad, whose producing credits include the Academy Award winning Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, will co-produce alongside Miyamoto. “I have asked Avi-san to produce this film with me, and we have now officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production”, Miyamoto confirmed.
The game-series-turned-cultural-phenomenon is an action-adventure roleplaying game that follows the Hylian protagonist Link as he journeys to Hyrule, a medieval Western Europe-inspired fantasy world, to save the titular Princess Zelda. From it’s humble beginnings as a 2D 8-bit game in 1986, Zelda now consists of 29 video games – including original titles, spinoffs, and remakes – with its two most recent original titles, Breath of the Wild (2017) and Tears of the Kingdom (2023), being hailed as two of the best video games of all time.
For UAE based gaming fans, the fun doesn’t stop there. October brought in the first major celebrity guest announcement of the upcoming Middle East Film and Comic Con and it’s none other than video game voice acting legend Troy Baker, best known for his role as Joel Miller in The Last of Us franchise.
The eleventh edition of the annual pop culture convention is to convene from February 9 to 11, 2024 in Abu Dhabi and will feature a designated Indie Game Zone platforming and supporting local game developers. A roll out of more exciting film, comic, and gaming celebrities and artists are expected to be announced soon.