Shortly after the staggering announcement of a live-action Legend of Zelda movie entering production, Nintendo officials met for their regular financial briefing and discussed the findings of the first half of the 2023 fiscal year. President Shuntaro Furukawa and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto gave some insight into the new enterprise that Nintendo is embracing, that being large-budget films based on their IP. With The Super Mario Bros. Movie emerging as a monumental success earlier this year, Nintendo expressed in this meeting their emboldened decision to “take [the] appropriate risks in film production” (Furukawa). Later in the briefing, some discussion was had about Tears of the Kingdom’s development, both as a sequel to Breath of the Wild and as a modern Switch game. The full transcript can be read here.
When asked about the process of expanding Nintendo worlds and characters from video games to movies, Miyamoto divulged the true length of time over which discussions about a Legend of Zelda film took place in the lead-up to the global announcement earlier that day. As you can see from his statement, though the process has been long, Miyamoto’s vision is optimistic.
“Regarding the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, I know we face an extremely high hurdle in producing a film that will not disappoint the global fan base. With this challenge in mind, I have been discussing this project with Avi Arad, Chairman of Arad Productions Inc., for about 10 years. Movies are just like games, in that you need to spend a lot of time working on them until you get to something you’re satisfied with. Movies therefore need sponsors who can lend their full support until completion. For the production of our movies, Nintendo itself acts as a sponsor. To produce the movie, we were able to assemble a group of people who are willing to commit time to the production until we come up with something we feel confident about.
Shigeru Miyamoto
For The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Chris Meledandri, the founder and CEO of Illumination, and I had creative control for all aspects of movie production, and together we continued with production until we were satisfied. For the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, Avi Arad and I are taking plenty of time to prepare. We hope to release something good that will meet everyone’s expectations, so please look forward to it.”
It’s hard to believe that such talks were started so long ago, essentially around the time of A Link Between Worlds’s release in 2013. (And reminder: that game’s 10th anniversary celebration is happening here at ZU next week!) But of course, he’s right. Film and game production can take a very long time if you’re waiting for the right opportunity to move forward. There are essentially no details about the script or casting, but I wonder how many variations of the movie’s concept have entered Miyamoto’s mind over all these years, and what it will eventually look like when it lands on our big screens.
Furukawa chimed in on the delicate balance that Nintendo has to manage, between bridging the gap to unfamiliar media frontiers and retaining the carefully cultivated image of the company and its properties, clarifying that the number one priority is for their non-video game projects to funnel interest towards their game business.
“We do not intend to simply set a numerical sales target for our mobile and IP related business and then aim for that. The use of Nintendo IP requires extremely careful supervision so we don’t negatively affect the image people have of our IP or harm the emotional attachment they’ve formed with it from playing our games. While we always strive to achieve the maximum results possible in each initiative, we do not believe that setting numerical targets such as revenue for the IP related business is appropriate.
Shuntaro Furukawa
By deepening their fondness for Nintendo games and IP through our initiatives to expand the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP, we hope to provide opportunities for individuals to get their hands on a dedicated video game system for the first time. That is the core of our business, and it also encourages those who might have played our games before, but are taking a break from video games for a while, to try one of our dedicated video game systems again.”
I’m glad to hear that the quality of these external projects is being managed very closely. Furukawa also stated, returning to the subject of video games, that it will be necessary to “diligently [support] each [software] title, both new and previously released” as the holiday season approaches, with Super Mario Bros. Wonder newly released and games like Super Mario RPG on the horizon. The future of Zelda is very bright, indeed.
