Nintendo has partnered with Sony Pictures Entertainment and LA-based Arad Productions to adapt its gaming franchise The Legend of Zelda as a feature film for the first time. 

Nintendo representative director Shigeru Miyamoto will produce the live-action film with Arad Production chairman Avi Arad, who is best known for launching the live-action Spider-Man trilogy in 2002 and leveraging other Marvel characters such as Iron Man and Venom into major box-office hits. Wes Ball (The Maze Runner, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) is also on board as a director.

SPE and Nintendo are co-financing the pic, with more than 50% of the budget coming from Nintendo. And SPE will manage worldwide theatrical distribution. 

The Legend of Zelda fantasy-adventure games center around Link, a young swordsman who fights to save Princess Zelda from evil forces trying to steal her powers and overtake the kingdom of Hyrule. The lead title launched in 1986, and Nintendo has since produced 29 in total. The franchise’s top-selling games include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017, pictured) and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023), which have respectively sold more than 31.5 million and 10 million copies worldwide on Nintendo Switch. 

This big-screen project comes hot on the heels of Nintendo and Illumination’s CG-animated feature The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which premiered in April and became the highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time after just one week in theaters. It has since generated US$1.36 billion in worldwide ticket sales.