Summary
- Wes Ball faces immense pressure adapting
Legend of Zelda
after success of
Super Mario Bros. Movie
and
Planet of the Apes
franchise. - Ball acknowledges fan expectation from past
Maze Runner
projects and trusts his personal connection to deliver. - With recent success of video game adaptations, navigating fanbase expectations for
Zelda
will be a tricky terrain.
Wes Ball is set to follow up Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes by taking the helm of the live-action adaptation of Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda franchise, and the director has revealed the immense pressure that comes with the project. While adapting any beloved property is a tricky matter, the massively successful animated Super Mario Bros. Movie, which became one of the highest grossing movies of 2023, has just added to the pressure to deliver.
Ball is currently riding a wave of praise for his foray into the Apes franchise, and all signs suggest Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will deliver a strong box office performance. This should all be good news for the director’s side-step into the video-game adaptation arena. Speaking to Variety, Ball shared his personal connection with the Zelda franchise, explaining:
“I can’t say a lot about it, but “Zelda” is hugely important to me. It’s up there with “Star Wars” for me in terms of what shaped me as a kid. Talking about adventure? That’s the thing. And you’re right, it’s like one of the last untapped properties that is dying for a cinematic treatment. But we’ll see what happens. The expectation game, I got a taste of that with the “Maze Runner” movies. It was a small fan base, but a very passionate one, and they let me know when I didn’t do it right for them.”
He continued:
“And it leveled up to a different level on this one [Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes] where you understand people’s passion for those stories, the Caesar trilogy in particular. So I take it in and then I let it go, because obviously you can’t have that while you’re making a thousand decisions a day. You ingest it and hopefully you make good choices along the way in a string of thousands and thousands of choices that you make. And so I count myself as a gigantic fan, and I trust that in a way as we move forward, and hopefully it lines up with other people that want to see the same thing.”
The Legend of Zelda Comes with High Expectations
Recent video game adaptations, both on the big and small screen, have delivered some of the best results the genre has ever seen. For this reason alone, any new project is already lumbered with the weight of expectation. Add in the recent Super Mario Bros. Movie success, and the huge fandom that the Zelda franchise brings with it, and the challenge to pleasing both the fanbase and newcomers becomes a very tricky terrain to navigate.
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Ball is no stranger to taking on popular IPs, having previously been responsible for bringing The Maze Runner to screens, with mixed results. As his first directorial effort, the YA novel adaptation gave Ball a very quick lesson in managing the expectations of fans, and the subsequent sequel releases only seemed to hammer home the difficulty of juggling fans, uninitiated audiences, and box office performance. Despite the disappointments of The Maze Runner series, it seems that he will have no such issues with his Apes movie, which has scored well with both critics and audiences.
The Legend of Zelda
is expected to head into production soon, but does not yet have a release date.
You can see our interview with Wes Ball talking about his work on Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes below.
