©Courtesy of Nintendo
Nintendo has announced that Bo Bragason will be cast in the title role in Sony’s upcoming live-action production of The Legend of Zelda, and that Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will play the part of Link. Both actors are British. In a social-media posting on Wednesday, Nintendo’s game director Shigeru Miyamoto was quoted as saying, “I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them on the big screen.”
The Legend of Zelda, a live-action adaptation of the familiar video game, is scheduled for theatrical release on May 7, 2027, two months after its original projected debut. The film is being directed by Wes Ball, who also did the honors for The Maze Runner and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Bragason has been acclaimed for her roles in the BBC One series Three Girls and The Jetty, and in Disney+’s Renegade Neil. She also starred in the vampire comedy film The Radleys, directed by Euros Lyn. Ainsworth supplied the voice of Pinocchio in Robert Zernecki’s live-action feature about the classic marionette. He also played the role of Miles in The Haunting of Bly Manor for Netflix, and stars in the Canadian comedy series Son of a Critch.
The casting strategy was hailed by journalists such as Carlos Morales, who wrote in IGN: “Wes Ball is an underrated genre craftsman, with a strong eye for believable world-building and tangible set piece craft. His most recent film, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, went a long way to show how much attention he pays to specific emotional stakes and great use of VFX. All of those skills make him a prime choice for helming Zelda, since its gorgeous, fantastical world and unique visual identity are such hallmarks of the series.”
Morales added that “The Zelda movie will have to fill in a lot of the gaps in characterization left open by the games, so letting audiences see Link and Zelda as characters first instead of celebrities they have to compartmentalize will give Ball and his team more room to tell their story effectively … Whatever adaptational choices are made, going with unknown actors for Link and Zelda proves that Ball at least has the right mindset.”