The ‘Legend Of Zelda’ Movie Has Already Been Delayed, Two Years Before Release

It still may not be wide knowledge that The Legend of Zelda is getting a live-action filming in the coming years, one directed by Maze Runner veteran and Zelda superfan Wes Ball.

Despite it not being out for two years, the film has already announced a delay. Albeit not a very long one. Here’s what Shigeru Miyamoto himself said about what was happening:

“This is Miyamoto. For production reasons, we are changing the release date of the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda to May 7, 2027. It will be some weeks later than the release timing we originally announced, and we will take the extra time to make the film as good as it can be. Thank you for your patience.”

This seems a little odd, as the old release date was March 26, 2027 and the new date is just a month and a half after that. I’m not clear on what the issue is where you’d push for such a short delay this far out from the movie actually releasing, which includes zero promotion or even casting announcements yet.

I wanted to check if this was trying to dodge some sort of other big movie releasing then. March 26 is the currently scheduled date for Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, the latest in the MonsterVerse series, a blockbuster string of films that has done well. Avengers: Secret Wars was recently moved and will be out in December of that year rather than midway through. But no, it doesn’t really feel like this is just MonsterVerse dodging, and I don’t take Miyamoto for a liar or obfuscator.

Again, we know almost nothing about the movie other than its director and now its release date. It has always felt like a risk compared to say, Nintendo’s recent Super Mario Bros. Movie blockbuster that performed incredibly well and stayed true to the cartoony aesthetic of the games. While I can understand how Zelda may be better suited for live-action, it still feels like it could go either way.

A recent news item here was a report that popular fan-cast Hunter Schaefer was being looked at to play Zelda, because well, she really looks like Zelda. But this instantly resulted in a slew of unfortunately expected transphobia, and a question is if the film would in fact cast an iconic role with a trans actress given that it would almost certainly overwhelm the entire conversation about the film indefinitely. That’s the unfortunate state of the media landscape.

I do believe this film will come out and not get stuck in development hell like other projects, given that Nintendo is very much interested in multimedia IP expansion these days. But I’m not quite sure what to make of this oddly short delay two years out.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.