The Long-Awaited Legend: A Zelda Movie is Finally Coming to Life!

A live-action Zelda film is officially in the works with Nintendo’s full backing, yet there was a time when series creator Shigeru Miyamoto vehemently opposed the idea of such a film. In fact, he stated that he wouldn’t support a Zelda movie even if one of the most esteemed names in Hollywood was behind the proposal.

The Video Game History Foundation recently conversed with Nintendo of America veteran Gail Tilden for the latest episode of its Video Game History Hour podcast. Tilden led NOA’s marketing efforts from 1983 to 2007, overseeing everything from the US launch of the NES to the explosive debut of Pokémon in America. In the aftermath of Pokémon’s triumph, Tilden’s division “essentially took over both merchandise and entertainment” licensing for Nintendo’s franchises.

“People were constantly reaching out about making a movie,” Tilden explains. “It’s easy to guess that the most frequent request was, ‘We’re calling to propose a Zelda movie.’ The response was always no. I even asked him personally, ‘Mr. Miyamoto, if Steven Spielberg himself wanted to make a Zelda movie, what would be the answer?’ He replied, ‘No.’ So that was the final word. The answer was consistently no.”

It’s easy to understand why Miyamoto would be resolutely against the concept – after all, this was not far removed from the disastrous 1993 Super Mario Bros. film. Although that movie has garnered somewhat of a cult following over the years, at the time it was seen as a complete disaster and captured none of the playful essence of the video games it was based on.

However, then we received The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023, an entertaining film that ignited the box office with a narrative much closer to the original video games. Following the success of this film, Nintendo joined forces with Sony to co-finance a Zelda film directed by Wes Ball, known for his work on The Maze Runner trilogy and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This time, Miyamoto is taking on the role of a producer for the film.

While Miyamoto was against the creation of a Zelda film back in the 2000s, another Nintendo icon – Metroid director Yoshio Sakamoto – was “receptive to pitches regarding Metroid,” Tilden shares. Reports about the Metroid movie rights circulated during the 2000s, and at one point, renowned action director John Woo was working on a film adaptation.

“We had multiple meetings” about the Metroid movie, Tilden recalls. “It was a lengthy process. We discussed who should portray Samus. ‘Should it be Charlize Theron? Should it be…?’ ‘No, she’s not suitable.’ It went on and on about which actresses they envisioned as Samus, but we never reached a conclusion. I believe they felt she didn’t embody beauty in the traditional sense, but was more of an athletic figure.”

Tilden remarks that a Metroid film would have necessitated a