Zelda live-action Netflix series reportedly cancelled by Nintendo in 2015 following leaks
Now, nearly six years after the original news broke, new details emerged about the project. Speaking to YouTube channel The Serf Times in a recent interview, Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything, talked about a "secret project" that was in the works while he was at College Humor. It involved the latter collaborating with Nintendo to make a claymation version of Star Fox and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Shigeru Miyamoto even came to College Humor's office to discuss the project. About a month later, Adam Conover heard the news that the Zelda Netflix adaptation was not happening and around the same time, his boss also told him that they weren't doing the Star Fox claymation anymore.
Asking for more information, he says his boss said the following:
“Oh, someone at Netflix leaked the Legend of Zelda thing. They weren’t supposed to talk about it. Nintendo freaked out because it was the first time they had done any IP in years for any products [...] But when Netflix leaked it, they freaked out and they pulled the plug on everything. They pulled the plug on the entire program to adapt these things.”
You can watch Adam Conover share his anecdote as from 39:05 in the interview below:
In a tweet following the resurgence of the news, the author of the original Wall Street Journal article, Ben Fritz, confirmed that his reporting in 2015 was accurate but didn't confirm (and apparently won't) that his source was a Netflix employee, only saying that it "may not be true".
So it would seem that the live-action Zelda series was actually going to happen until the news (in some form) started to go public before Nintendo wanted it to be. Given how they are protective of their IP, they found it best to pull the plug on any collaboration at the time. Should the project have gone forward, would you like to see a live-action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda?
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