ATTENTION: THE FOLLOWING REPROT IS A RUMOR. PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING REPORT WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.

Recently Universal Studios took Disney to task with the animated Super Mario Bros. Movie. The film grossed $1.3 Billion worldwide on a $100 Million budget, far surpassing any recent animated film from their top competitor Disney. Ironically Disney distributed the infamously bad 1993 Live-Action Super Mario Bros. movie.



The film was based on the Nintendo franchise of the same name and was born from the recent Universal-Nintendo partnership that allows Nintendo characters and rides and various Universal Studios theme parks across the world. Now it appears that the success of Mario is making Universal want to pursue another popular Nintendo franchise.



According to industry insider Jeff Snyder via The Hot Mic podcast on YouTube, Universal and Nintendo are very close to signing a new deal for another animated feature, and it isn’t Donkey Kong. Instead it will be the popular fantasy series The Legend of Zelda. Snyder said:

“I’m told that Universal is, in fact, closing a big deal with the Nintendo corporation for The Legend of Zelda. Zelda is looking like the next big Illumination-Nintendo franchise, which we were all sort of expecting. I’m told that is happening.“

This is somewhat interesting since no company outside of Nintendo has touched the Zelda IP in decades. The last times gave us the short lived animated series from DIC (“Excuse me princess.“) and the infamous Philips CD-i games (“Gee, It sure is boring around here.“)



Interestingly enough Imagi Entertainment, the studio behind TMNT and Astro Boy, pitched a Zelda film in 2007 and even made an animated short, but it was rejected by Nintendo. The short later found its way online.

Following the rumor being spread online many fans rejoiced. But others expressed concern as Illumination was the animation studio mentioned to be making it. While Illumination is good with animated comedies many believe that DreamWroks may be better suited for an action-adventure film with their How To Train Your Dragon series being cited as an example.



Many fans have expressed worry that if Illumination is the choses studio they believe they would go for a more cute Wind Waker style of film instead of the more traditional dungeon crawling fantasy esthetic in games like Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild.

Whatever the case Universal is fully invested in their partnership with Nintendo as they seek to dominate both the box office and theme parks. Perhaps the rumor of a Zelda themed area replacing the Lost Continent at Island of Adventure in Orlando could be true after all.

Sources: ScreenRant, Kotaku