Remember when The Wall Street Journal reported that Netflix was producing a Legend of Zeldaย live-action series years back? That wasย 2015. And yet, no word has arisen concerning the series for a while. Well, it turns out there’s a reason for that – it’s canceled.
News of this under-the-radar decision came from comedian Adam Conover in an interview with political YouTube channel The Serf Times. Turns out thatย Nintendo hired Conover to produce a stop-motion adaptation of their famous franchise, Star Fox, with Shigeru Miyamoto even visiting the offices of his company,ย CollegeHumor, during production at one point. But one day, the big N suddenly pulled the plug off the project – as well asย The Legend of Zelda.
A month later, suddenly there were reports that Netflix wasnโt going to doย Legend of Zelda anymore,” says Conover in the interview, “I was like, โWhat happened?โ And then I heard from my boss that we werenโt going to doย Star Foxย anymore. I thought that was weird, so I asked him what happened and he said, โOh, someone at Netflix leaked theย Legend of Zelda thing. Nintendo freaked out”.
Nintendo is a real sticker in regards to secrecy surrounding work-in-progress projects. The reason for this is plainly stated by Nintendo America President Reggie-Fils Aime in a 2017 Mashable interview.
The fans should know that we are not a company that is sitting in a little ivory tower and not thinking about all of these dynamics. [We’re] a company that likes to keep our information very close to the vest, and announce information when it’s ready and when all of the elements are fully fleshed out.”
This is evidently a key value at Nintendo. In the 2015 WSJย piece, writer Ben Fritz claims theย Legend of Zeldaย series was in the “early stages” during the time of writing. In the aboveย Mashableย interview, Aime later states that letting consumers know about a product five or six years beforehand “doesn’t make a lot of sense to [Nintendo].”
Netflix’s leaking of theย Legend of Zeldaย TV series, therefore, conflicted with their company’s values and policy. It was still in the early stages of development and not at a stage where Nintendo was ready to announce. Knowing this, it is perhaps not too surprising that the big N pulled the plug.
Given that Nintendo’s trust in Netflix is possibly shaken due to this leak, it won’t be surprising if we don’t see a Nintendo IP on the streaming service for some time, if ever.
What are your thoughts on the cancellation of The Legend of Zelda Netflix series? Are you bummed that we will never see Adam Conover’s Star Foxย series see the light of day? Let us know in the comments below.
