Nintendo and Sony are making a live-action Zelda movie, but is it a good idea?

Nintendo and Sony have officially announced they will make a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie, which is something fans of the video game franchise have been craving for years. There’s even an IGN April Fool’s video for it!

But the biggest question remains: Is it a good idea?

Video game adaptations have been huge misses until the last few years. I’d say the first truly successful adaptation is HBO’s The Last of Us this past winter with the Super Mario Bros. Movie not far behind. And while Five Nights at Freddy’s wasn’t a success with critics, fans of the series have enjoyed it.

Fantasy series seems to be more the rage lately, with Game of Thrones setting the stage for its prequel and the successful (if critically/fan-base divisive) The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power Prime series. So I don’t actually see there being too much of an issue for audiences to step into the land of Hyrule.

But do we really want to see a rehashing of Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess? If you’re a 90s baby like me, you’ve played Ocarina at least a dozen times in its various formats (N64, 3DS, Nintendo Switch Online…). You don’t really need to see it again, and that game is less about the storyline and more about the puzzles and dungeons.

I think a movie or TV series could be successful if they choose to tell their own original story with Link and Zelda, and I’ve talked about this before. There is a lot of Hyrule history to play with, and while fans may want to see something like a deeper dive into Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom lore, making their own original story set in the Zelda universe may be the way to go. Even if it’s BOTW-adjacent.

Fan casting has been going on for years and those mocked-up character posters from a few years ago always circulate, with Tom Holland as Link and Emma Watson as Zelda. Will we get Jack Black playing another iconic Nintendo villain in the form of Ganondorf? Honestly, he could probably pull it off if he wanted to.

So is it a good idea for a live-action Zelda movie? I think an animated version would be better, but there’s certainly hope given how well video game adaptations have done in the last few years.

As a Nintendo and Zelda fan, we can only hope.

What are your thoughts on the Zelda movie? Who do you want to see play each titular role? Let us know in the comments!