Reminder that today only (12/5/23), to celebrate the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we are giving away a free Zelda Scotland map poster to anyone that spends £5 or more in R-CADE Glasgow from 12-7pm.
“Maybe the voice of the fans is what’s important here.” - Hidemaro Fujibayashi, director of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on if a Legend of Zelda movie could happen.
Traditionally, it's expected that films based on video games will be panned by critics and do poorly in the box office. Assassin's Creed (2016), Prince of Persia, Warcraft and Lara Croft Tomb Raider have all struggled on the Rotten Tomato's scale (even if some of them have a dear place in our hearts.) But in the last couple of years the tides of turned and video game centric films seem to be beloved by fans and critics alike.
Whether totally animated (the recent Mario Bros movie has nearly made $1billion worldwide) or a live action/animation mix like Detective Pikachu and two successful Sonic films - gaming movies have rounded the corner.
But could The Legend of Zelda join the party?
“I have to say, I am interested. For sure. But it’s not just me being interested in something that makes things happen, unfortunately.” said Eiji Aonuma, The Legend of Zelda series producer, in that same interview with Polygon. The quirk with producing a Legend of Zelda movie is that one came out in 2009.
"Nintendo is like a talent agency. We have many other entertainers on our roster," said Shigeru Miyamoto in an interview with Nikkei (available in English at Video Games Chronicle).
"There are various ways to develop characters (for the screen), including characters that are suitable for film and characters that are well known.
For Nintendo fans, that might be a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand it means the company is more open to putting their properties into different mediums, which means fans are able to explore their favourite worlds from a different angle.
But for some fans this would be a negative - overexposing their favourite characters and ruining their personal perception of the characters.
The question of being well known for The Legend of Zelda franchise becomes less and less difficult with each successful Switch game, and so the likelihood of a market that's prepared for a movie starring Link grows stronger and stronger.
And with queues at Game on Argyle street today to buy the game on day one - it looks like Tears of the Kingdom will be another home run.
The question will be if the movie's animated or live action. Luckily there's an example of both.
Miyamoto ominously added this to his Nikkei interview: "Please keep an eye on our next production.” "We’re working together into the future with me in that capacity. But it’s hard for us to talk about anything else at this time.” said Illumination CEO Chris Meladandri to ScreenRant. It seems as though another Illumination and Nintendo collaborative product is on the cards - but will it be 2 Mario 2 Luigi or the big screen launch of The Legend of Zelda? We wait with baited breath (of the wild).