‘The Legend of Zelda’ Movie Debuts First Look Images

40 years after the original movie, The Legend of Zelda movie is finally happening — and it looks pretty faithful to the games. (At least the recent ones. I faithful movie based on the old Nintendo game would probably be a little too blocky for most tastes.)

The image above, which Nintendo itself premiered on their Nintendo Today app, features the film’s two main stars: Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link and Bo Bragason as Zelda. Unlike Nintendo’s hugely successful Mario Bros. franchise (which will release its first sequel next summer), The Legend of Zelda will be a live-action movie with flesh-and-blood actors.

Nintendo also released two additional close-ups of their characters. First Ainsworth as Link...

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And also Bragason as Zelda... with some serious elf ears.

After decades of development, the Zelda movie was finally and officially announced in March of 2025. That was when Sony and Nintendo formally announced production on the project, helmed by Wes Ball, who directed The Maze Runner franchise and the most recent film in the Planet of the Apes series, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The casting for the film was first confirmed by Nintendo in July of this year.

Little is known about the film beyond the two lead roles and the basic contours of the story, inspired by the decades of Zelda games on the various Nintendo consoles. The original, The Legend of Zelda, was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System on February 21, 1986. The most recent as of this writing, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was released on Nintendo Switch on May 12, 2023. (The game was recently re-released for Nintendo’s new Switch 2 console, although a Switch 2 specific Zelda game has not yet been announced.)

The Legend of Zelda live-action movie is scheduled to open in theaters on May 7, 2027.