Two photographers stumbled upon the live-action Legend of Zelda movie filming in New Zealand.
The first look at The Legend of Zelda live-action film has leaked after filming started in New Zealand earlier this month. We will embed multiple videos below as Nintendo’s goons will likely get these videos DMCD’d, despite these poor photographers seemingly accidentally stumbled upon the film set in the wilderness.
This is the second big leak this week for upcoming Nintendo films, as the first look at Yoshi in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie also was revealed early thanks to Pilsbury.
The first video shows a clear look at actress Bo Bragason as Zelda along with what appears to be Severance star Dichen Lachman. She had not been previously revealed to be part of the cast, although it makes sense as she is an Australian actress and had a small role in director Wes Ball’s last film Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes — playing the human resistance leader Korina who appeared at the end of the film.
Video has been embedded below and you can find the source video on IG here.
They’re going with the classic elven feature with the ears. Lachman also has the pointy ears, which makes me think she could be playing Zelda’s bodyguard Impa who has appeared in several of the games, but this is speculation at this time.
First look at Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link also leaked in a separate video. He appears to have dirty blonde hair and is wearing a dark green tunic… not unlike Link from the Twilight Princess era.
Here’s the IG link and an additional video embedded below:
It’s unclear at this time if this will be a new Zelda story or an adaptation of one of the games. It would be really aligned with the lore for it to be a new story vs an adaptation, as all the games take place within three branches of the timeline. That also avoids pissing off fans if it turns out to be a poorly done adaptation.
Wes Ball has cited Hayao Miyazaki as one of his main influences for his vision of the film. He describes Zelda’s fantasy style as belonging less to the likes of Lord of the Rings’ high fantasy, and more to the soft magic of Studio Ghibli. For his film, Ball intends to embrace ‘that wonder and whimsy that [Miyazaki] brings to things’ in order to honor the spirit of The Legend of Zelda. Which raises the obvious question: if that’s the vision… why not make it animated? The soul of those movies arguably comes from the magic of animation itself. And it’s also with Sony co-producing, a studio that’s delivered some of the best modern animated projects with the Spider-Verse films and Kpop Demon Hunters. Guess time will tell.
“My whole life has led up to this moment. I grew up on Zelda and it is the most important property, I think, that’s untapped IP, if you will. So we very much are working hard to do something. We’re not just trying to do it because we can. We want to make something really special.”
— Wes Ball
The Legend of Zelda is set to release in theaters May 7, 2027. For more film updates check out out section on the site.
