Nintendo teams up with Sony and… Spider-Man

Nintendo is making a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse producer Avi Arad and Maze Runner director Wes Ball. The Big N issued a surprise press release after filing its latest quarterly results, explaining that the company and Arad have been working on the film behind the scenes for years, but that it is now finally going into production.

The producer of Spider-Man —

Arad is known for his work on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the 2000 X-Men film, although he has produced some questionable films, including Morbius. Ball is known for the three Maze Runners and is also directing Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, due out in 2024.

The strange alliance with Sony —

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto will co-produce the film alongside Avi Arad and Arad’s production company, Arad Productions. Nintendo will finance more than half of the film and Sony Pictures Entertainment will distribute the film in cinemas all over the world, as well as contributing to the financing of the production: an unexpected alliance, considering the fierce competition between the two companies in the gaming field.

Nintendo at the cinema —

“By directly producing visual content from Nintendo IP, Nintendo is creating new opportunities for people around the world to access the world of entertainment that Nintendo created through means other than its dedicated game consoles,” said house in Kyoto in Press release. “By actively participating in the production of the film, with the aim of bringing smiles to everyone’s faces through entertainment, Nintendo will continue to strive to produce unique entertainment and bring it to as many people as possible.” And it will probably make Nintendo’s accounting books smile too. The Super Mario Bros. movie, which launched in April 2023, has grossed over $1 billion in theaters alone.

I have asked Avi-san to produce this film with me, and we have now officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production. It will take time until its completion, but I hope you look forward to seeing it. [2]https://t.co/2H9lzzS5Pv

— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) November 7, 2023

Which Zelda will it be based on? —

Miyamoto said on Twitter that since production has just begun, it will still be some time before the film is ready to be brought to theaters. For now, we don’t know if the Zelda film will follow a new plot or if it will adapt one of the many chapters of the series: if we were to venture a hypothesis, the most credible could be the one that would lead to an alignment with the new course, starting from Breath of the Wild and up to Tears of the Kingdom.