After 38 years of waiting, the new release window for The Legend Of Zelda film worries me

Video game fans The Legend of Zelda (Live Action)
I’ve been waiting a long time to see the characters come to life in live action, and despite the announcement of the film’s release, I’m more worried than ever about the film actually getting made. Obviously, video game adaptations have had a bad reputation for many years. The entire genre seemed cursed to release only flops, but everything changed in 2019 and 2020 when Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog released live-action adaptations that worked.

Since then, more video game adaptations have hit the big screen, some live-action and some animated, but many have been huge hits, and I’m personally a big fan of these adaptations, finally shining a light on some amazing games that deserve more attention. But it also leads to questions about when other fan-favorite games will receive their adaptations, and in 2023 Nintendo confirmed that one of the oldest and most popular franchises The Legend of Zelda, was finally ready to have a movie of his own.

After waiting so long, The Legend Of Zelda movie’s vague release window is worrying

It’s hard to get excited about a movie that seems so far away

At the time, a director and a writer were even announced to lead the project and bring it to life, but November 2024 brought with it an update that really deflated my hopes of this movie getting made. When discussing Nintendo’s upcoming projects, it was revealed that The Legend of Zelda the film currently has a release date set as 202X. This undefined and vague number essentially means they have no concrete plan and are hoping it will be released by 2029 at the latest, giving it a five-year window.

However, this also proves that the film is not a huge priority for Nintendo, as their focus remains on things like the Super Mario Bros. Movie sequel and his many other projects. Of course, that makes sense, The Super Mario Bros. movie raised more than a billion dollars, but not Seems like a disappointing update for Link and the Kingdom of Hyrule.

The Legend Of Zelda will be a very difficult film to make (and even more difficult to get right)

Video game movies have just started to gain momentum

Perhaps part of the delay stems from how challenging it can be to make a Legend of Zelda film first. While the franchise is popular, it also has a extensive history dating back 38 years and dozens of games. These games also include some of the richest stories of any Nintendo title, with an expansive open-world gameplay style featured in the Nintendo Switch’s most popular releases. This means that there are fans from different generations, with very different ideas about what The Legend of Zelda it should be.

Pleasing everyone by including enough source material to make all types of fans and newcomers happy, and building a functional new franchise is an overwhelming challenge. However, it’s something they seem to have done incredibly well with when working with Illumination on the Mario film, which had many similar restrictions. So, it’s possible that Nintendo is waiting to start another collaboration, which could be its best chance to make The Legend of Zelda the movies work, but since they will be live action, they need another studio with more experience in that field to make it work.