Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has been talking to divisive Marvel veteran Avi Arad about a Zelda movie for over 10 years

Link and Epona — (Image credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto had been discussing a Legend of Zelda movie for about a decade prior to the new announcement.

The developer set the internet ablaze earlier this week when it announced a forthcoming live-action Legend of Zelda movie adaptation, complete with Shigeru Miyamoto supervising. Now, in a new financial briefing, Miyamoto has shed a little more light on what was going on behind the scenes surrounding the new movie adaptation.

"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," Miyamoto said in the Q&A. "With this challenge in mind, I have been discussing this project with Avi Arad, Chairman of Arad Productions Inc., for about 10 years," the developer continued.

"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," Miyamoto concluded on the matter.

So far, we know Wes Ball will be directing the new Zelda movie, while Arad will be producing. Miyamoto is also clearly involved in the movie, and although we don't clearly know to what extent, it's likely the Nintendo veteran will be producing the adaptation, similar to the role he had in this year's Super Mario Bros Movie.

Elsewhere, Zelda fans want Hunter Schafer to play the titular princess. Yes, the fan-casting has already begun, with Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin and Heartstopper’s William Gao coming up in the conversation surrounding Link, while Marvel star Zendaya and Anya Taylor-Joy being mentioned for Zelda.

The list of upcoming video game movies just keeps getting longer with the new announcement from Nintendo.

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.