The Legend of Zelda (film)

The Legend of Zelda is a 2006 computer-animated fantasy action-adventure film directed by Peter Jackson and Hayao Miyazaki, produced by Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke, and written by Miyazaki, Shōtarō Suga, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, based on the video game series of the same name by Nintendo, and the second film in the Nintendo Cinematic Universe (NCU). It stars Elijah Wood, Winona Ryder, Christopher Plummer, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Keith David and Morgan Freeman. The film follows Link as he embarks on a quest to save Princess Zelda from the clutches of the sinister Ganondorf.

The film was the result of a complex development process, starting with Zemeckis' idea of directing and co-producing The Legend of Zelda with Universal Pictures in 1997. Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka turned their attention to producing Zelda, which was to be a computer-animated fantasy film directed by Jackson and Miyazaki starring Wood and Winslet. The team agreed and completed filming in two years with Centroid Motion Capture at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California using motion capture technology, after which animation work and post-production ensued in the United States, Hong Kong, and China for a year.

The Legend of Zelda premiered in Japan on December 7, 2006, and in Canada on December 14, and was released in the United States on December 22, as part of Phase One of the NCU. It set the record for the biggest opening weekend for a video game-based film, and was a box office success, grossing $1.337 million against a $200 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2006, and received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the plot, casting, performances, humor, action sequences, visual effects, emotional weight, faithfulness and Jackson's direction to the source material. It was praised for its darker plot, sets and a story appropriate for a young audience. It was followed by The Legend of Zelda: The Sacred Realm (2014) and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (2018).

Plot
In the land of Hyrule, the demon Ganon was defeated by Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, the King of Hyrule. Before passing away, however and tragically, the King separates the Triforce, a sacred golden relic (left behind by the Golden Goddesses, Din, Nayru, and Farore, once they finished creating the realm) that grant their holders great power, into three fragments; the Triforce of Wisdom was covered and hidden by the Hyrulean Forces while the Triforce of Power was captured by Ganon's forces. Meanwhile, the fate of the Triforce of Courage is unknown, possibly under the possession of a hero who would soon take the now deceased king's place as defender of Hyrule.

A long time later, in Fort Hateno, the only home of the Hyrulean Forces during the time of the ongoing Hyrulean Civil War, Link is a young boy soldier who is the runt of the legion under the command of his uncle, General Alfon. Link opts to be the legion's lookout, a relatively easy job as no one dares to attack them. As the Hylians feast, Link spots an army led by the evil Ganondorf. He attempts to blow the warning horn, but his lungs are too weak, and the Hylians are taken by surprise. Alfon is killed by Ganondorf and all the other Hylians are captured. The only two left behind are Link and Tingle, a wise-cracking wizard.

Link seeks out the help of the Oracles for assistance, with Tingle planning to tag along to which the boy soldier himself reluctantly agrees. The Oracles reveal that Ganondorf wears a magical suit of armor and the only weapon capable of killing him is the Master Sword, a powerful weapon King Rhoam once used to defend his kingdom, which must be wielded by a fearless warrior donned in green. The Oracles also say that the Master Sword is hidden somewhere in the catacombs beneath the Hyrule Castle, the heart of Hyrule currently under the Ganondorf's control. Meanwhile, Ganondorf finally possesses the Triforce of Wisdom, and plans to use both Triforces to control the world, but his advisor, Wizzro, reminds him about the Triforce of Courage Link had around his neck. Realizing that he does not have enough power to control Hyrule yet, Ganondorf decides to set a trap for Link.

Later, Link manages to enter Hyrule Castle, disguised as a Moblin Sentry, but during one of Ganondorf's assemblies, his cover was blown by a mob of Hylian slaves, resulting in his capture along with Tingle's. Ganondorf then lectures him on the power of flesh, which he demonstrates by hypnotically enticing a Hylian slave girl to leap to her death. Thrown into the dungeons with his partner, Link is left to brood over his failure. Just then, a piece of the floor opens, and a girl in a tiara armed with a bow pops up. The girl introduces herself as Princess Zelda, daughter of King Rhoam, and, despite not seeing Link as a warrior, offers Link and Tingle a chance of escape. Link and Tingle agree, and the trio teams up to escape the castle.

While exploring the dungeon, they share their stories about how they got thrown in the dungeon. Zelda was captured because Ganondorf thought she can tell him where the Triforce of Wisdom was, and like Link on the Triforce of Courage, she was thrown into the dungeons when she refuses to surrender it. They come across a burial chamber of King Rhoam, where Link obtains a sword. They then enter a room where a minstrel is being chained by another Moblin. The minstrel, Kass, tries to convince the henchman to let him go. But everything he says is a lie: he is cursed, and every time he lies, one of the strings on his harp snaps. Link, Tingle, and Zelda attempt to set him free, but then they hear more henchmen coming. They run for it, while Kass tries to save himself. Link and Tingle get separated with Zelda in the process.

Suddenly, Link runs into a Moblin guard wielding an axe. The guard attempts to kill Link, but before he can strike, Link pulls out his sword, which is suddenly revealed to be the Master Sword, and uses it to block the axe. The sword magically damages the axe, and the horrified guard runs away. Excited over the magic sword, Link uses it to clear a path in order to regroup with Zelda, and the trio continues onward. They run into more guards, and Link deflects them with the Master Sword. Meanwhile, Kass has escaped the dungeon, but is being chased by a dog. Link slows down the guards by slashing some wine barrels with the sword. The trio finally makes it to the entrance of the castle, only to find the drawbridge closed. Onox and the other henchmen have them cornered, but then Link uses the sword to cut the chain to the drawbridge, allowing it to fall down. Onox and the guards stand back in fright, while Kass bowls past them. The trio make it past the closing gate, but Kass barely makes it with his pants ripped, and together, they escape into the forest.

Back in the castle, Onox nervously goes to Ganondorf and informs his master of Link's escape. Angered by this, Ganondorf sends his army to find him. In the forest, Zelda has sewed Kass's pants back together, much to his relief. They are all very thankful that they made it out of the castle alive, except for Link, who was suddenly troubled over the fact that the Hylian Shield, a special shield which King Rhoam also used along with the Master Sword, was supposed to be in the burial chamber with the Master Sword. Convinced, Zelda pinpoints the Hylian Shield's current location, Turtle Rock. The quartet soon travels to Kakariko Village to find passage to Turtle Rock.

For 17,000 rupees, 2,000 in advance and 15,000 upon arrival, Darunia, a noble descendant of a lost Goron tribe, agrees to take the four of them to Turtle Rock. Suddenly, General Onox and his troops enter the tavern, where the team is hiding, to confront the quintet, only to be subdued by patrons in a ensuing bar brawl which allows Link and his friends to escape the confusion. Darunia leads them to Turtle Rock, where Link braves a series of booby traps to retrieve the Hylian Shield, but not before the team gets chased out of the temple by a giant rolling boulder first. They are then confronted, arrested, and taken back to Hyrule Castle by Ganondorf's soldiers.

Ganondorf's goons take Link and his team to an area where all three Triforces will be brought together and tie them to a post to observe. Soon, Ganondorf combines all three Triforces, transforming into a massive boar-like beast, Ganon, to finally execute the Hyrulean Forces. Eventually, Zelda uses her dagger to free the team, allowing Link to free the rest of the Hyrulean Forces to battle Ganondorf’s army. Link and Ganondorf face off and succeeds in stabbing Ganon's weak point, i.e., Ganondorf’s crown, destroying them both.

With Link believed to be dead, the Hyrulean Forces honor him as the bravest boy soldier in history, only for Link to suddenly wake up, having only been unconscious after the final battle. As Hyrule returns to its former splendor, along with the now combined Triforce safely secured in the highest room of the tallest tower back at the Castle of Hyrule, a victory celebration commences, complete with medals for the heroes, Link, Tingle, Kass, and Darunia, presented by Princess Zelda, who now safely takes back control of Hyrule on behalf of her late father.

Voice cast

 * Elijah Wood as Link
 * Kate Winslet as Princess Zelda
 * Patrick Stewart as King Harkinikan
 * Zelda Williams as Navi
 * Emma Thompson as Impa
 * Pom Klementieff as Princess Ruto
 * Laetitia Casta as Nabooru
 * Uma Thurman as Great Fairy
 * Mary Steenburgen as Saria (motion-capture)
 * Joey King as Saria (voice)
 * Tom Kenny as Tingle
 * Ewan McGregor as Kass
 * Michael Clarke Duncan as Darunia
 * Nick Offerman as Rauru
 * Julia Butters as Malon
 * Charles Marinet as Talon
 * Brad Dourif as Wizzro
 * Emily Blunt as Din
 * Felicity Jones as Nayru
 * Rachael Taylor as Farore
 * Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ganondorf
 * Tress MacNeille as Twinrova
 * Kurt Russell as General Alfon
 * Val Kilmer as General Onox
 * Morgan Freeman as Narrator

Background
The earliest attempt at a feature-length adaptation of a The Legend of Zelda property by the major film industry date to the early 1990s, as there was a strong interest in producing a film based on the 1986 video game; Takashi Tezuka had several discussions with producers and agents about the idea, and a screenplay by Paul Haggis received eyeballs from major studios. However, nothing came about this due to conflicts between Nintendo and the studios. Zelda player Elijah Wood, who had personal experience with the entertainment industry as a child since 1989, wanted to produce a film based on the game since 1990.

In 1995, Shigeru Miyamoto contacted staff from Nintendo, under the guise of working on a school economics project; they informed him about studios in the past failing to produce a film based on the game due to having too little of an understanding of the RPG's X-factor. It took him 18 months to convince Nintendo to set up negotiations, but Nintendo finally agreed to it because of his upfront royalty being better than other studios the company worked with. Miyamoto obtained an option from Nintendo after writing a 30-page proposal showing how he would adapt the game and going through three months of "intense" broker dealing with the game publisher.

Miyamoto and Tezuka went on an 18-month-long trip across the world funding the film once a draft of the screenplay was completed, and most of the financing depended on foreign distribution rights. During the trip, he met directors Peter Jackson and Robert Zemeckis, who viewed the 16-year-old as a "young, ambitious, artistic person" as well as a "convincing salesman" of a project based on an enterprise with a huge fanbase. In mid-1997, Production work on Zelda began nine years prior to its release, with full development beginning in late 1998 after an extended period of preparatory work.

Originally, Zemeckis planned to have Zelda be a $200 million studio project with a big name in the director's chair; during development, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Renny Harlin, and Stan Winston were attached for directing the film at one point but dropped out. In addition to the script receiving positive coverage from the magazine Movieline, Premiere also announced the project in a 1995 issue when Winston was still signed on, revealing plot details such as a rogue lead, a magical dragon-controlling device, 14 creatures from the original game, and an effects-heavy final battle.

A majority of studios and directors loved the screenplay, but turned away due to a lack of recent successes in the big-budget fantasy genre and Wood's lack of star power. Miyamoto and the studios he encountered constantly conflicted with Nintendo, which wanted a direct-to-video release instead of the big-budget theatrical film the Canadian dreamed of. Cameron considered the project just before he did Titanic (1997), but the deal did not suffice due to Nintendo's failure to come up with a merchandising deal that appealed to 20th Century Fox, where Cameron worked. Potential deals with Paramount Pictures and Lightstorm Entertainment were also destroyed due to strong disagreements on how to finance the film.

Tom Hanks, an actor and co-founder of Playtone alongside Gary Goetzman, joined the Zelda project in April 2001, and the screenplay was finalized in December 2001. Silver came in with the vision to make it a television series instead of a film. Zemeckis thus tried to incorporate that plan in his project; however, Nintendo sold the rights of the original game property to Nintendo, and despite Tezuka telling Hanks Zelda would allow a TV animated series, that ultimately was not the case.

So the production could be managed in the short time available, the film's development was separated into three phases, with each phase being dedicated to a particular part of the production process and run by a different unit director answering to Jackson. The film went through multiple phases of trial and error until the final product was solidified. Zelda was kept a secret until 2005 when it was near completion, as the developers felt that they had announced its parent video game too early. So as to remain close to the development of Zelda, the lead staff of Zelda moved from ImageMovers to Digital Frontier, a motion picture production company in Japan with a distinguished large scale CG production department. This was part of an overall shift in development methods when the game was changed from a spin-off to a mainline entry.

Miyamoto began writing the script in October 1998 based on the rules of the second edition of the 1987 game; he planned Zelda to be a film trilogy, his goal being to create "the Star Wars of the fantasy genres" using the original trilogy as a template for the story arcs. He and Haggis, were interviewed to be additional writers in April 1999, thanks to an executive's connection with Jackson.

To give the writers an idea of the quality expected in the screenplay, Jackson first required them to view 1990s fantasy films he felt showed the bad state of the genre at the time, and then adventure productions like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Hook (1991), Ben-Hur (1959), Dragonheart (1996) and The Lord of the Rings film series (2001-2003). The first draft of the film took eighteen months to complete. Jackson claimed the final product is a collection of different scenes from 16 drafts.

Although the class of characters and rules of Zelda are brought over to the film, Jackson decided to create a generic setting only loosely based on one of the lesser-known game settings, Hyrule; he felt using specific campaign settings heavily dependent on player interpretation would confuse viewers. He also had to risk the combat actions not reflecting how players would use them; for example, "somebody could be casting one of those spells and standing there for ten minutes until the spell is ready to go," explained Zemeckis. Another small creative liberty was the red dragons being more powerful than the gold dragons. From this point, production lasted approximately two and a half years.

Casting
The cast of Zelda was a mixture of established film actors and up-and-comers in Hollywood. Most of the casting took place in London starting April 21, 2002, due to the shooting location; this resulted in the inclusion of actors like the Jean-Luc Picard actor Patrick Stewart and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom Jackson cast with knowledge of his performance as Terminator T-800 in the Terminator film franchise. A-list actors were mostly avoided for leads in order for the characters to look like "normal" players of a Zelda match.

According to Nozue, another key element during the early segment of the film was displaying how the world's society sees Regis's responsibilities, along with the emotions involved in such a role. The main goal for the film's characters was to portray them as normal people with character flaws, rather than magical superheroes. Link was an original character created for the film with no connection to the events of the game, intended to act as a medium for the wider audience Triforce was aimed at. Link also provided a medium for the story themes surrounding immigration issues, which in turn brought the audience closer to the main cast. While Link was original, multiple key characters from the game played prominent roles, particularly Princess Zelda, Tingle, Kass, and Daurina. Zelda was highlighted as the "keystone" connecting the game, the film, and the anime series Brotherhood. While her role in the film was not an active one, her strength was conveyed through her single-minded devotion to her goals.

Design
Zemeckis worked on the looks of each character, including the lead role portrayed by Wood. According to Zemeckis, the project required a lot of research. Around 150 costumes per character were designed on paper and out of those, 25 costumes were selected and detailed. He also created a range of 20 to 30 looks especially for Wood's suit of armor as well as the supporting cast of Zelda. Zemeckis, along with the team working on the costumes, created the looks of all characters on the sketch. They had worked for about eight months on the various characterizations of Wood and the supporting cast. According to him, "It was a different kind of design experience altogether".

Zemeckis drew inspiration for the visual-effects of Legend of Zelda from experience with The Polar Express (2004), which uses motion-capture technology to create three-dimensional CGI images of characters. Appointing Jerome Chen, whom Zemeckis worked with on The Polar Express, the two decided to chart realism as their foremost goal.

Animation supervisor Kenn MacDonald explained that Zemeckis used motion capture because "Even though it feels like live-action, there were a lot of shots where Bob cut loose. Amazing shots. Impossible with live-action actors. This method of filmmaking gives him freedom and complete control. He doesn't have to worry about lighting. The actors don't have to hit marks. They don't have to know where the camera is. It's pure performance." A 25 × 35-foot stage was built, and it used 244 Vicon MX40 cameras. Actors on set wore seventy eight body markers. The cameras recorded real-time footage of the performances, shots which Zemeckis reviewed. The director then used a virtual-camera to choose camera angles from the footage which was edited together. Two teams of animators worked on the film, with one group working on replicating the facial performances, the other working on body movement. The animators said they worked very closely on replicating the human characters.

Over 450 graphic designers were chosen for the project, the largest team ever assembled for a ImageMovers-produced movie as of 2006. Designers at Imageworks generated new animation tools for facial, body and cloth design especially for the movie, and elements of keyframe animation were incorporated into the film in order to capture the facial expressions of the actors and actresses. The mead hall battle scene near the beginning of the film, among others, required numerous props that served as additional markers; these markers allowed for a more accurate manifestation of a battlefield setting as the battle progressed. However, the data being collected by the markers slowed down the studios' computer equipment and five months were spent developing a new save/load system that would increase the efficiency of the studios' resources. To aid in the process of rendering the massive quantities of information, the development team used cached data. In the cases that using cached data was not possible, the scenes were rendered using foreground occlusion, which involves the blurring of different overlays of a single scene in an attempt to generate a single scene film.

Filming
Shooting of Zelda took place from May 28 to the middle of August 2003 in Prague, with a two-week rehearsal period that included eight days of a cast read-through at Jackson's apartment just before. 2,000 extras were provided by Prague's casting agency Sagitarius, with each battle consisting of around 35 stuntmen and five of the leads at most.

The film posters showed that the film would use performance capturing technology, which was previously used in The Polar Express. Miyamoto announced that the filming would resume from January 15, 2004. The first schedule of indoor shooting started with Wood's base actions being filmed as per the motion capturing norms. The film was launched with a formal set on January 19, 2004 at the Hyrule Castle located inside Stage 25 at Paramount Studios. While real places were leased for sets, work of the film was also done at Barrandov Studios. The first phase of production began in Chennai on March 15, 2004. It was then moved to London on March 17, 2004, where motion capture filming was done at Centroid Motion Picture lab in Pinewood Studios Production in London lasted for 15 days, during which, Jackson announced that the film might be released for December 22, 2006. After completing the first phase of production in London, the crew returned to Chennai on April 2, 2004. The next schedule of the film shooting was planned at various locations in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Filming in Los Angeles took place at Stage 16 at Warner Bros. Studios backlot.

The second phase of production began at Stage 19 at Universal Studios Lot. Although initial reports claimed that production had moved to Mohanlal's Vismayas Max studio, it was later reported that shooting never took place at that studio. It instead happened at Stage 12, where the crew shot scenes which they were unable to complete during their schedule in London. The second phase was completed on April 30, 2004, after which a romantic song choreographed by Jamal Sims was filmed in early May 2004. It was said that the entire film shooting would be completed in the second schedule itself and the post-production work would begin. However, the team was off with the lead actor to Hong Kong for the third schedule of the film on May 12, 2004 where some crucial scenes and combat scenes featuring the lead actor and the antagonist were shot at the State of the Arts Gallery studio. Since the film was shot using performance capture technology, 48 cameras were used to shoot each and every scene. The 48 cameras captured performance of artistes' at 48 angles. Zelda was equipped with Dolby Digital sound technology. As per reports, due to involvement of extensive graphics, four separate teams, including teams from Chennai and London were also working on the film. On May 20, 2006, Jackson announced that Zelda was in the process of being finalized. On September 28, 2006, the final edited version of the film was screened by the director, writer and the lead actor along with handful crew members.

Fight choreography
Apart from Kate Winslet, who played the game during her high school years, and Arenberg who was a casual player, none of the leads were familiar with the original game; Ewan McGregor learned a bit about it from his sons who were fans, and Wood prepared for his role by watching Zelda games in person, but then "realized that it seemed to be mostly about arguing" and "just put my trust in the script." While not a player, Wilson's knowledge of the game came from groups of her high school peers playing it: "I remembered stories that I heard about kids committing suicide, and all this other nutty stuff. But I didn't really know anything about it. I knew that it was a fantasy game ..a roleplaying game and THAT interested me." When working on the battle sequences, Jackson and the actors had a strong emphasis on making sure they followed the rules of the original game.

Jackson and the producers intended Zelda to be a "fun" film that would appeal to younger audiences and fans of the game, which explains the over-the-top performances by actors such as Michael Clarke Duncan; however, the director also tried to push the PG rating with the violence in the battle sequences. In trying to make the fight scenes have as much realism as possible, Jackson and the choreographers had not used blood and gore, but also had the actors use real swords. Due to the long amount of time a fight scene would be choreographed and filmed, several "repeat blades" of swords were built and used; a total of six repeat blades were made for Link's sword, two of them broken during shooting.

Most of the principal actors did the stunts themselves, with choreographer Graeme Crowther recalling only "two or three" times a double was required; in fact, when shooting the final battle sequence on the film's last day of principal photography, Wood intentionally wanted the first 300-pound steel axe as close as possible to him in the frame, which Jackson agreed. Instances where Wood was doubled by Theo Kypri consist mostly of acrobatic shots. The actors' fighting styles varied from Duncan's "quick and dirty" yet "smooth" movements to Schwarzenegger's hardcore methods to McGregor's artsy "fluid," art-like maneuvering, which Wood attributed to his background in dancing. Wood's experience in taekwondo also aided in his fighting skills.

Sound design
Gary Rydstrom is the sound designer for the film. He worked over two and a half years on the sound design of the film. Three teams of sound editors were working in Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Chennai under him. The final phase of re-recording was done in Northern California at Skywalker Sound during end-August 2006. In an interview with The New York Times he quoted, "For the war sequence, we got 150 people scream like how they would in a war and recorded the sound. I went to fortresses and collected samples of how sound resonates. Based on the impulse response data, we recreated the acoustics of a durbar." Rydstrom started working from the scratch instead of using available sound samples. He added that when his team started working on the foley (ambient sounds) he told the film director to provide him with the exact costumes used whilst filming. However, realising that the filming was done using performance capture technology, the entire set of costumes were designed to provide requisite foley. He also paid attention to nuances extensively where he added, "For instance, the image you see on screen is a composite of several layers of images. The clothes, the movement, the swords and so on were created separately and put together. My team also had to add sound, layer by layer."

Visual effects
The computer effects were done by Industrial Light & Magic and Rhythm & Hues Studios and Weta Digital. ILM's founder, George Lucas, had experience in writing for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game and offered free advice to the crew despite not officially considered part of the production. When filming began, Boucher predicted a total of around 200 shots with digital effects and 75 dragons in the film's climax. After filming finished, Jackson claimed the number of shots with digital effects to be 550 and computer-generated settings and characters to be 15, with more than 150 dragons in the climatic showdown. Kazoo Oga, a Studio Ghibli animator, declared four months of traditional animation work was spent on the movie's first three minutes. There were also concepts originally planned to be practical effects but were computer-generated in the final edit; this included the gyroscope that holds the scepter, which was initially a machine-controlled device where all attempts for the motors to control it properly failed, and Dexter the pocket dragon which was planned to be an animatronic dragon.

For the dragons, the animators focused the most on their flying and diving cycles, using hawks and eagles as references, as well as their skin, where reptiles such as crocodiles were observed in producing the textures. While the dragons were computer-generated, the fire they blew was done using practical effects, and to be digitally incorporated, the flame throwers were filmed outside during the night time and blown into a steel set hanging on its side.

Music

 * Further information: The Legend of Zelda (soundtrack) and Music of the Nintendo Cinematic Universe

The film's score was composed by Howard Shore, with leitmofits by Koji Kondo, the composer for Zelda. This effect was reinforced by Shore's work. According to Shore, Woo wanted a complex musical score. The harmonics and themes change throughout the score to create both an ambiguous atmosphere and a sense of impending tragedy and loss. Shore was brought on board to create a score that would fill the film's world and act as a counterbalance to Kondo's music from the game, which was incorporated into the overall score. Due to the themes and events of Zelda, Shore needed his music to reflect the weight, contradictions, and shifting "light and dark" perspectives of the characters and locations. To achieve this, he used a 76-piece orchestra and 40-member choir, and a varied range of instruments. He wrote more than 100 minutes of music. Recording was done in the Sony Scoring Stage, California and Todd-AO, Los Angeles using a symphonic orchestra. The soundtrack was released as a two-disc album on November 27, 2006.

Theatrical
The film had its world premiere on December 7, 2006 in Japan. Three days later, the film appeared at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. With the filmmakers and cast in attendance, it screened at several American universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, New York University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Northwestern University.

On December 22, 2006, The Legend of Zelda opened to the public in limited release at three theaters in Los Angeles and three in New York. More theaters were added during the limited run, and on December 25, the film officially entered wide release by screening in 706 theaters across North America. The film grossed $8,188,587 over the weekend, ranking one at the box office. Audiences polled by the market research firm CinemaScore gave Legend of Zelda a "A+" grade on average. The theater count hit a high of 5,478 for four months, before a gradual decline. The film ended its North American theatrical run on April 27, 2007, having grossed $1.337 billion. The film was rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for some rude humor, mild peril, language and action. The film is part of Phase One of the NCU.

Home media
The Legend of Zelda was released on DVD (in separate widescreen and pan and scan editions) on May 1, 2007 and HD-DVD on May 22, 2000. Before the North American rental release on May 1, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_Inc. Blockbuster Video] wanted to purchase hundreds of thousands of extra copies for its "guaranteed title" range, whereby anyone who wanted to rent the film would be guaranteed a copy. Blockbuster and Universal could not agree on a profit-sharing deal, so Blockbuster ordered two-thirds the number of copies it originally intended. Universal made around one million copies available for rental; Blockbuster's share would usually have been about 400,000 of these. Some Blockbuster stores only displayed 60 copies, and others did not display the film at all, forcing customers to ask for it. The strategy required staff to read a statement to customers explaining the situation; Blockbuster claimed it was only "[monitoring] customer demand" due to the reduced availability. Blockbuster's strategy leaked before May 9, leading to a 30 percent order increase from other retailers. In its first week of rental release, Zelda made $6.8 million. This return was lower than would have been expected had DreamWorks and Blockbuster reached an agreement.

On November 4, 2008, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released The Legend of Zelda on Blu-ray. All the extras from the DVD release were present, with the theatrical trailers upgraded to HD.

The film was also collected in a 10-disc box set titled "Nintendo Cinematic Universe: Phase One – The Beginning" which includes all of the Phase One films in the Nintendo Cinematic Universe, released on May 4, 2010.

Box office
Zelda had its European premiere at the London Film Festival on February 18, 2007; in March 2007, it began to screen in various territories outside North America. It debuted in Israel to "potent" returns, and limited releases in Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Finland followed on January 21. After January 28 opening weekends in Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain and Norway, Zelda had earned $97 million in 12 countries for a total of $12.1 million outside North America. On February 4, Zelda debuted in France and Belgium. Expanding to 303 theaters in the United Kingdom, the film ranked first at the box office with $19 million, and would hold the record for having the highest opening weekend for a video-game-film until it was surpassed by Sonic the Hedgehog. On the weekend of February 18, the film grossed $787 million from 21 territories, for a total of $104 million outside North America. The film had "dazzling" debuts in Hungary, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and New Zealand.

As of February 18, the most successful territories were the United Kingdom ($15.2 million), Italy ($10.8 million), Germany ($10.5 million), Australia ($6 million), and France ($5.3 million). The Academy Award nominations meant strong performances continued across the board; the following weekend, American Beauty grossed $10.9 million in 27 countries, with strong debuts in Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea. Other high spots included robust returns in Argentina, Greece, and Turkey. On the weekend of March 3, 2007, Zelda debuted strongly in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, markets traditionally "not receptive to this kind of upscale fare". The impressive South Korean performance continued, with a return of $278 million after nine days. In total, Zelda grossed $981.7 million in North America and $356.3 million internationally, for $1.337 billion worldwide.

Critical response
The film received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the plot, casting, performances (particularly of Wood and Ryder), humor, action sequences, visual effects, emotional weight, faithfulness and Jackson’s direction to the source material. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an 87% score, based on 55 reviews, with an average score of 8.54 out of 10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “The Legend of Zelda is a action-packed adventure that all fans of the series will enjoy, and proves that 2006 isn’t such a bad year for movies after all.” On an A+ to F Scale, the film received a “B+”.

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 78% based on 205 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A life-affirming, if saccharine, epic treatment of a spirit-lifting figure in sports history". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A on scale of A to F.

Robert Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, and wrote: "The movie's races are thrilling because they must be thrilling; there's no way for the movie to miss on those, but Zemeckis and cinematographer, Erik Messerschmidt, get amazingly close to the action."

Accolades
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Sequels
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Transcripts
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