Illumination has denied involvement in The Legend of Zelda movie.
Jeff Sneider recently reported that Universal Pictures were closing a deal on an animated movie adaptation of the Nintendo video game. However, in a new episode of The Hot Mic with Jeff Sneider and John Rocha, he said, “We extrapolated that it was gonna be Illumination that made this movie because of the success that they had with Mario, but Illumination is not involved—first of all, no one’s involved until Universal gets the rights and that is what I reported last week, that Universal made the deal.”
“I don’t know where that came from,” said Chris Mellandri, founder and CEO of Illumination. “I mean, I can understand how people would surmise all sorts of things because, obviously, we’ve had a great experience working together. My relationship with Nintendo now includes being on their board of directors, so I understand how people can surmise these things. But in terms of the specifics, that was just something that I’ve been hearing lots of reports. This is just about what’s next between Nintendo and Illumination.”
Is The Legend of Zelda movie happening?
It is likely that the movie will still happen under Universal, but they have not closed a deal with Illumination.
“The news said Universal is making a Zelda movie,” said Sneider. “They’re getting the rights to do it. And Universal hasn’t called me…I’d like to think I have a good enough relationship with Universal. I did give them a 24-hour heads-up about the story. Nobody had an issue with it. So, I get it, these are high-level discussions that are happening between Universal and Nintendo, but I’m telling you, these two are in negotiations for Zelda, whether it goes to DreamWorks Animation or Illumination or they do it live-action; who f–king knows? We’ll come to that bridge when we get there.”
