The Legend of Zelda Movie’s Release Date Confirms Rise of Video Game Movies

For more than two decades, the first week of May launched the summer movie season with the latest entry in a beloved franchise. In 2002, we got Spider-Man. In 2012, it was The Avengers, followed by Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame arriving the last week of April in 2018 and 2019.

But with the dismal box office receipts that followed Thunderbolts* (released on May 4, 2025), the old heroes have fallen and a new hero has risen to take their place—the Hero of Time, in fact. Nintendo has announced that the live action The Legend of Zelda movie will release on May 7, 2027.

By claiming this all-important date, The Legend of Zelda is further demonstrating that the day of the superhero film has ended and video game movies are on the rise. Just this year, A Minecraft Movie has earned $423,579,000 at the box office, more than Marvel’s entries Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* combined. Last year, only Deadpool & Wolverine outdid Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but The Super Mario Bros Movie took second overall in 2023 (behind Barbie), beating out Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

While it’s tempting to pit the two genres against one another, they have much in common. After all, both superhero movies and video game movies had long suffered the ignominy of adaptations that seemed embarrassed by the source material; the whiny, plastic-eared Steve Rogers of 1990’s Captain America has as little to do with the comics as the cyberpunk Mushroom Kingdom of 1993’s Super Mario Bros. has to do with the video games. Moreover, both genres have rich worlds and fanbases devoted to sharing them.

At this point, the cynic might point out that The Super Mario Bros Movie and A Minecraft Movie did big numbers because of Jack Black’s ability to go viral, not because of their stories and even less because of the respective movies’ craft. But that doesn’t take into account the reception to the TV series The Last of Us, which enjoys high praise from critics and audiences alike. The Super Mario and Minecraft movies may be memes played in cinema, but they hardly represent what the video game movie genre can be.

That fact puts a lot of attention on The Legend of Zelda. Easily the richest of the classic Nintendo properties, The Legend of Zelda features a fully-developed fantasy world with compelling characters, including the underestimated adventurer Link, the magical princess Zelda, and the demonic Ganon. No casting decisions have been made, but the movie will be written by Derek Connolly, he of the Jurassic World trilogy and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, and will be directed by Wes Ball, who recently helmed Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

With Ball and Connolly’s blockbuster experience allow them to transform The Legend of Zelda into a movie that stands on its own, appealing to broad audiences in the same way the Spider-Man and The Avengers won over audiences who have never read a comic book? Or will this ambitious entry mean game over to the latest cinematic trend? We’ll find out in two years.

The Legend of Zelda is slated for release on May 7, 2027.