It’s not April Fool’s day so you can bank this announcement in the “It’s really happening” category, as Nintendo officially confirmed a live-action Legend of Zelda movie is in the works. In a now (unsurprisingly) viral tweet from November 7, Nintendo Japan says it’s truly going to make a live-action movie based on The Legend of Zelda – one of the gaming industry’s most popular and storied franchises.
News of the film project’s existence was announced by Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa. Shigeru Miyamoto who created The Legend of Zelda will be a co-producer of the movie alongside Avi Arad. Arad for those who might be unaware is the main producer on a number of films under the Sony Pictures Entertainment umbrella. Including Uncharted. He’s also a producer on numerous Marvel films including Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Venom, Morbius, and most recently Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Arad is involved in a number of upcoming projects too. Some under Marvel and some based on other video games like Metal Gear Solid and the Borderlands movie. In short, Arad is an accomplished producer and is no stranger to films based on games. So it seems like Nintendo has made a wise choice here.
The live-action Legend of Zelda movie will be co-financed by Sony
A live-action Legend of Zelda movie will no doubt end up a costly film project. So it’s understandable that one might wonder who’s footing the bill. Turns out it won’t be all Nintendo. Though it is taking care of the lion’s share of costs. As the company confirms it will be financing more than 50% of the project. Sony will be taking care of another significant portion. As it will be co-financing the movie alongside Nintendo. Sony and Nintendo working together is perhaps the biggest surprise in gaming this year. Once upon a time this would have been less of a climactic detail though.
Way back before the original PlayStation came out, Sony approached Nintendo with a plan to release a Nintendo PlayStation hybrid machine. It was a console that would play both Nintendo’s Super NES cartridges and Sony’s Super Disc format CD Rom discs. The console was never released though because of disputes over licensing deals between the two companies. Which ultimately led to Sony’s now behemoth PlayStation brand and a falling out between it and Nintendo.
The point is, back before this console deal fell through (which was in the early 90s) was the last time Nintendo and Sony worked together. Those times of bad blood appear to be over. And ironically, Sony Pictures Entertainment will be the theatrical distributor of the upcoming Zelda movie.