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What a time to be alive for gamers who are also rabid moviegoers. One of the latest to follow the very wise trend of adapting a legendary gaming franchise into a live-action movie is The Legend of Zelda, as Nintendo looks to further their success from the Super Mario Bros. films, and easily the biggest and best news to date for the project has just landed in the lap of fans worldwide.
The film, slated for 2027 release, has officially wrapped filming. Take a moment to breathe that great news in before you take in the next and arguably greater tidbit: thanks to Gyula Pados, the director of photography for The Legend of Zelda movie, we now get a first-look at Link in full costume, and it is glorious.
To put it plainly, the tunic is definitely tunic’ing.
What Is the Latest On The Legend of Zelda Movie?
The answer is … all good things.
The film, distributed by Sony Pictures in association with Nintendo, tabbed Wes Ball as director (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Maze Runner trilogy) to oversee the execution of the gaming franchise’s first foray into the live-action space. Starring in The Legend of Zelda movie, as the famed Princess Zelda herself, is Bo Bragason (Censor, The Radleys) and in the tunic as Link is Evan Ainsworth (The Haunting of Bly Manor, Everything’s Going to Be Great).
There might also be familiarity regarding the environment from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, seeing as The Legend of Zelda was spotted filming in Otago, and in the small town of Glenorchy, locations previously used by Sir Peter Jackson when creating his critically-acclaimed, award-winning fantasy masterpiece in the early 2000s; and there are also early connections being made in the storyline to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time — the classic (read: masterpiece) Nintendo 64 game.
The Legend of Zelda Movie Can Learn From Super Mario Bros.
For those who may not know, the latest cinematic iteration of the Super Mario Bros. franchise is not the first attempt by Nintendo. That designation belongs to the original 1993 film and, well, Nintendo, and all involved, would love for everyone who experienced that film more than 30 years ago to forget it ever existed.
Super Mario Bros. (1993) starred Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi and, of course, their mission was to save Samantha Mathis’ Princess Daisy from the Goombas. It was a cast that included Dennis Hopper as King Koopa, so it’s fair to say the cast was arguably not the issue. It was the execution of the film — severely lacking and completely unserious (and not in that charming, self-aware way like with, say, the upcoming Street Fighter reboot) en route to being eviscerated by critics and audiences alike.
It fell flat on its face and into a warp zone with a lowly 27 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences dealt it a 30 percent approval rating with more than 100,000 reviews. It also lost millions at the box office compared to its $49 million production budget, but the animated reboot has given the franchise new life in theaters, with The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) both doing massive numbers for Nintendo.
The moral of the story is clear: it would do well for The Legend of Zelda to look at everything Super Mario Bros. (1993) did, and do the complete opposite.
The Legend of Zelda is scheduled to arrive in theaters globally on May 7, 2027.
