Earlier this year, Nintendo enjoyed impressive success with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and as many may have expected, the company has every intention to keep investing in adaptation of its biggest properties. To that end, recently, it was announced that Nintendo was teaming up with Sony Pictures for a live action The Legend of Zelda movie, with veteran Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto and Sony Pictures’ Avi Arad (Spider-Man, Venom) producing the film, and Wes Ball (Maze Runner, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) set to direct.
In a recent Q&A session with investors, Miyamoto touched on the movie and its announcement, revealing that the project is something he and Avi Arad have been talking about “for about 10 years”, and that Nintendo and Sony Pictures will be “taking plenty of time to prepare” for the project to ensure it can “meet everyone’s expectations”.
“I know we face an extremely high hurdle in producing a film that will not disappoint the global fan base,” Miyamoto said. “With this challenge in mind, I have been discussing this project with Avi Arad, Chairman of Arad Productions Inc., for about 10 years. Movies are just like games, in that you need to spend a lot of time working on them until you get to something you’re satisfied with. Movies therefore need sponsors who can lend their full support until completion. For the production of our movies, Nintendo itself acts as a sponsor. To produce the movie, we were able to assemble a group of people who are willing to commit time to the production until we come up with something we feel confident about.
“For The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Chris Meledandri, the founder and CEO of Illumination, and I had creative control for all aspects of movie production, and together we continued with production until we were satisfied. For the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, Avi Arad and I are taking plenty of time to prepare. We hope to release something good that will meet everyone’s expectations, so please look forward to it.”
Details on the movie are currently obviously scant, with the project said to be in early production, though unsurprisingly, speculation regarding things such as casting is already in overdrive. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for more details.