Will Nintendo Cancel The Zelda Movie After Super Mario Galaxy’s Marketing Misstep?

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is 2026’s highest-grossing film to date, pushing the film franchise past $2 billion worldwide. With this in mind, it would be foolish to suggest that Nintendo needs a lesson in movie marketing. But while the company doesn’t need help pulling in big numbers, there’s one simple thing it can do in its promotional materials to make its movie-going fans more excited.

The Legend of Zelda is next in line to get the silver screen treatment, and will undoubtedly be another box office smash for Nintendo in 2027. The action-adventure franchise is bigger than ever following the legendary one-two punch of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, meaning the theatrical adaptation will pull in millions no matter how many showings. Marketing a Zelda movie doesn’t need to feature plot twists, character cameos, and game references to sell tickets — in fact, it needs to show some restraint.

Mario’s Cosmic Spoiler Problem

Two weeks before the theatrical release of Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Nintendo and Illumination published a promotional video with close-up shots of many of the faces of the film. The video speeds up as it progresses, eventually becoming so fast that it’s impossible to catch all the characters without pausing the video. It’s a very smart marketing move, as it encouraged viewers to engage with it beyond a single viewing. Naturally, social media users also posted screenshots of each character they saw, further fueling the conversation.

The list has drawn numerous allies and hidden enemies from across the Mario series to keep diehard fans streaming their excitement online. There were also two important crossover characters in Nintendo’s history: Pikmin, alien creatures from Nintendo’s strategy-exploration franchise, and ROB, a real-life ’80s NES accessory. Both have made numerous appearances in all Nintendo games, and are perhaps best known these days for their fighting antics in the Super Smash Bros. series. Pikmin and ROB can be forgiven as little cameos left unspoiled, but Nintendo and Illumination crossed the line the following week with the release of the official Fox McCloud poster.

Fox’s revelation got many Nintendo fans talking, but that spark online would have been a fiery moment in the theater. Star Fox hasn’t had a new game release in nearly a decade, and the longevity of the franchise would have made the cries and cheers even louder if it hadn’t been for Fox’s launch. It would have improved the experience for millions of fans, and benefited Nintendo, too – the first wave of moviegoers and reviewers could have delighted the masses by telling them, “You can’t believe me who is in this movie.”

That time was stolen from us because of social media marketing that was impossible to make a big difference – Nintendo fans were already invested in the film, and it was going to be a multi-billion dollar success. Indeed, modern film marketing thrives on shared moments, with trailers and posters designed to dominate social feeds and evoke immediate reactions. It’s easy to see why studios rely on big action, but that doesn’t mean all surprises need to be sacrificed early on. Hopefully, that same mistake won’t be made in Nintendo’s next big-screen project.

A Zelda movie could have a similar bad ending

Nintendo’s crossovers may be a little too much for the serious, grounded Zelda scene, especially given the limitations of the live-action format – we probably won’t see Kirby sniff Stalfos, or Captain Falcon uppercut Ganondorf. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t miracles equal to Biggoron. The green-clad adventurer Link is almost as old as Mario, with the first Legend of Zelda game starting one year after Super Mario Bros. Zelda’s history is as rich as Mario’s, with 40 years of art, dozens of games, and hundreds of characters, creatures, and attractions. Filmmakers have an endless amount to choose from, so we don’t really know what to expect.

A large pool of possibilities, unfortunately, could mean a very large temptation for Nintendo to hit its keys too early. The effects of legitimate commercial spoilers can also be huge this time around, as the Zelda series is more story driven than Mario. No one expects the depth of narrative from Galaxy Movie, but there are millions of Zelda fans obsessed with classic story arcs, timelines, and memorable characters.

If a film is well-made, it should have many moments that deserve to be discovered in the cinema, not to be disseminated weeks in advance on social media. The main appeal of the Zelda games is discovery, after all – longing for what rewards and dangers await inside chests, hidden in secret caves, and beyond distant mountain peaks. In fact, Nintendo would do well to look back at what made the franchise so successful as it prepares for the film.

Open Your Eyes, Nintendo: You Already Have The Answer

Nintendo doesn’t need to look too far for a solution, as they already mastered the art of Zelda marketing a decade ago. In 2016, the trailer for Breath of the Wild debuted during the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It opened with the simple word, “Open your eyes”, before showing many images of nature in the game’s open world. The remaining minutes showed little more than Link climbing tall mountains, traversing the landscape in many places, and fighting some enemies.

Even the last trailer for the game, published a year before the release of Breath of the Wild, raised more questions than answers despite showing a lot. We’ve seen powerful action sequences without knowing the basics, heard lines of dialogue without knowing their context, and seen dramatic scenes without knowing what they might mean. The trailers revealed very little about the story, characters, shrines, Sacred Beasts, boss battles, or its main villain – because they didn’t need to. They set the tone and promised a journey, and despite years of waiting for the game’s long development cycle to finish, that was just what the fans needed.

You could argue that the marketing team only has so much to do when it comes to a Zelda movie – promoting a video game with hundreds of hours of gameplay is very different from promoting a movie that ends in one go. But that doesn’t mean Nintendo can’t use the same technique when cutting its trailers. Show landscape rather than important news scenes. Include dialogue that sounds vague when taken out of context. And if there are any characters, monsters, weapons, or locations that would make a Zelda fan’s jaw drop, don’t show them at all.

We’ve waited 40 years for Link, Zelda, and Ganon to appear on the big screen – in the meantime, we can wait a few weeks for the big things to appear if it means they’ll be even brighter. Nintendo, if you have something special like we all hope you do, please, keep it “secret from everyone.”

Release date

May 7, 2027

Director

Wes Ball

Writers

Derek Connolly

Producers

Shigeru Miyamoto, Avi Arad

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  Benjamin Evan Ainsworth

  Link

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  Bo Bragason

  Princess Zelda