It was not even known that a film adaptation of “The Legend of Zelda” was in the works, when the cast for the Netflix project was suddenly announced. There was a lot of excitement among fans, but it was short-lived: the tweet was just meant to showcase an art project.
Nintendo and movie fans have been waiting for a film adaptation of the classic game “The Legend of Zelda” for a long time. According to media reports, Netflix had shown ambitions in 2015 to implement the material as a live-action series. Since then, however, there has been little radio silence about these plans, even though live-action video games are currently very popular again.
Finally, in early October, something stirred when the cast for the Netflix film adaptation was shared on Twitter, along with the first character posters of what the actors would look like in their roles. According to this, Tom Holland would play the role of the hero Link, Emma Watson the role of Zelda he has to save, Idris Elba the evil wizard Ganon, Maisie Williams Saria and Meryl Streep Twinrova.
“The full cast for the Netflix live-action series Zelda has just been announced, it’s an all-star cast!” wrote a Twitter user named Dan Levelille.
Explanation in the same tweet: Just kidding
At this point, many users had probably stopped reading, because Leveille directly added “just kidding” and then explained in detail which programs he had used to create the fake posters. If you take a look at his Twitter bio, you will quickly see the reason for the Zelda experiment: Leveille works for Deviantart – an online platform on which digital (mainly fan) art is shared.
All of this remained hidden from enough Twitter users that news of a Netflix series about The Legend of Zelda quickly spread to social media. Some were excited about the long-awaited film adaptation, others wanted to know when it would start, and others had something to say about the supposed cast: “Can’t you find someone else to play Link?”
Those who immediately saw the tweet as an art project were annoyed that Leveille “plays with the emotions of the fans”, while others praised his talent and his desired casting: “Emma Watson as Zelda would have been totally cool.”
A “Zelda” film adaptation remains a pipe dream. After all the excitement about the fake tweet, Netflix may take heart and target the project. Until then, gaming fans can look forward to an HBO film adaptation of the hit game “The Last of Us”, which is just as eagerly awaited and is finally scheduled to be broadcast in 2023.