In 2015, news began to circulate that Netflix was planning a Legend of Zelda live-action series. However, as soon as we heard about the series, it was reported that Nintendo had pulled the plug. So what happened? It turns out that Nintendo was impatient with the news of the leaking show and decided that it did not want to move on – which seems a strange reason, considering all aspects.
Confirmation of why Netflix and Nintendo canceled the live action The legend of Zelda TV series comes from Adam Conover (via Collider). During an appearance on The Serf Times podcast, Conover talked about how he was working on a property other than Nintendo – a claymation Star Fox adaptation. However, both Star Fox and Legend of Zelda was turned off after the word of Zelda leaked to the Wall Street Journal.
“Then, a month later, reports suddenly appeared that Netflix would no longer make its Legend of Zelda,” said Conover. “I was like ‘what happened?’ And then I heard from my boss that we weren’t doing our Star Fox anymore. I was like ‘what happened?’ He was like, ‘someone from Netflix leaked the Legend of Zelda thing, they shouldn’t talk about it, Nintendo freaked out … and they shut down everything, the entire program to adapt these things. “
I’m not absolutely sure why Nintendo would be so terrified by the leak of a story that it would totally pull the plug, but hey, that’s your prerogative. That said, Nintendo has not had the best of luck when it comes to adapting its live properties, so maybe they were scared. The legend of Zelda remains an extremely popular series for Nintendo, and although there was an animation series based on the games that ran in 1989, there were no live-action adaptations, although you have to imagine that a live-action adaptation will attract interest of people. Will Nintendo try to adapt? Zelda again, be it live-action or some other medium? There is a lively Super Mario Bros. movie due to be released in 2022, and perhaps Nintendo is waiting to see how the public reacts to this before proceeding with adaptations of other games.
The first Legend of Zelda The game was released in 1986 and told the story of an elf-like boy named Link who is on a mission to rescue Princess Zelda. Several sequels followed, the most recent being the acclaimed 2017 release The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 2019 The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which is a remake of the 1993 game for the Game Boy.
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