I don’t know, I think it could beat Avatar if it had the right director. I would start with Ocarina of Time, then move on to Majora’s Mask, then add a prequel called The Skyward Sword, based on the new Zelda game scheduled to release this year. Peter Jackson directing? Maybe. I would not cast Elijah Wood as Link, though. He’s an excellent Hobbit, but a poor Hero of Hyrule. Ganondorf could be done by John Travolta, after a little makeup work. Princess Zelda/Sheik needs to be done by a blone actress who can look like a male Shekiah. We can just find some kids to make up to look like Kid Link, Kid Zelda, and Kid Ruto. Whe you think about it OoT has a lot of main characters; Link, Zelda, and Ganon, of course, but then you’ve got the Six Sages. Who would your list be for this movie?
Have you seen this link. See what I did there.
I actually think it is a terrible idea, and I love the games.
I know other have disagreed, but I really think the story and characters are kind of weak in Zelda. Even Twilight Princess(my favorite story) was weak, with only Midna being a real character.
I actually think weak story is one thing Zelda really struggles with. I love the games and always enjoy playing and re-playing them, but I think if one had an amazing story, it would really elevate the games even more.
I like to think of Okami as a Zelda game with some decent story telling, but even it is not that strong.
Clearly has potential, but the record of video game to film adaptation is fairly terrible. Resident Evil and perhaps Tomb Raider are the only real successes and they are mediocre films at best. In addition, one must consider the appeal of the fantasy genre in general…aside from LOTR (and possibly Willow) fantasy films generally don’t do well at the box office. I can’t imagine that any serious, proven director would want to stake their reputation on a video game inspired flick and it would absolutely need high calibre directing talent to make it work. I’m certain it would be fucked up disaster.
Are these guys still available?
At first I thought this was a bad idea, but PSXer’s link has completely sold me on the concept.
Well, regardless of the mostly negative feedback, I would still watch this movie, and I’m sure it might have a cult following, like RHPS, or Heavy Metal, and so many other films that, while not reaching #1 at the box office, became loved classics by everyone.
The plot that I made up for Ocarina Of Time was that he was this really cute kid that all the women fell in love with so they decided to help him. Talk about the ultimate gamer fantasy. 
No. No no no no no no. No, no, no.
This is one of those ideas that would be awesome if we lived in a perfect universe. There’s a reason that cinema adaptations of video games uniformly suck: inherently different types of conflict. I’m using that word in the literary sense. Remember back in grade school when you learned about the types of conflict a story can have? Person v. Self, Person v. Group (or World), Person v. Other Person, Group v. Group, et cetera. With the exception of puzzle games and co-op multiplayer, all video games fit into the Single Protagonist v. Group (or World). Even in the case of co-op multiplayer, it’s you and a handful of other human players working to kill things (v. Group) or complete some non-combat objective, like survival or puzzle solving (v. World). What I’m getting at here is that in the narrative of the video game, the player is the most important character. It is how you, the human player sitting at the PC or the console, learn and change, hone your skills, over the course of the game, that makes the game an interesting experience. Yes, some games also have in-game stories with additional types of character development, but those are ancillary, as Tetris proves.
You simply cannot replicate this type of conflict with an experience as passive as watching a movie. You can’t show Link hacking at grass for ten minutes to gather rupees, or failing to defeat a dungeon boss six or seven times before getting good enough at dodging the attacks. That’s horrible cinema. Okay, you say, so instead you make the movie a cinematic representation of all the awesome things in the game. But now you’ve removed the Player vs. Game conflict, so you have to substitute something else instead. That means one of three things: 1) You stretch out or exaggerate whatever in-game Character(s) v. Character(s) or Character(s) v. World conflict the game already has; 2) You insert additional elements of conflict, by adding new characters or additonal backstory, 3) You do nothing, and hope the in-game story stands on its own.
I submit that options 1 and 2 make it incredibly easy for the movie adaptation to have a shitty story that departs from the themes of the game in significant ways. Option 3 simply isn’t possible for most games, as most of the narrative is the player thinking (or talking) to themselves. Even if it is, and even if the story does stand on its own, it’s really no longer an adaptation of the game, but a good story that happens to have come from a game.
In the case of the Zelda games, love them as I do, I simply don’t think the story is strong enough to withstand the inevitable stretching and additions it would undergo as a cinematic adaptation. More importantly, far too much of the Zelda experience is the player exploring, deciphering, and fighting for themselves through this world beset by evil. If you want to watch passively while someone else fights evil, there are already thousands of action flicks out there. At best, a Zelda movie would be a decent action flick. At worst, it would be a stilted, dragged out, piss-poor excuse for an epic fantasy.
There are many good reasons why a Legend of Zelda movie would not work.
And one very good counter-example:
http://www.effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil/seasons?vid=342&sid=1
The moment Link talked I’d walk out of the theatre. Link shouts, screams, grunts, whimpers and hums. He does not speak. When Link speaks, you get lines like: “Well excuuuuuuse me, Princess!”
OoT makes a great game, but a horrible movie. Beat Temple, meet Sage, rinse and repeat.
I wouldn’t mind a game with a deeper plot, but I don’t want Link to become more complex. If the events around him become more complicated that’d be great. Same ol’ Link just doing his hero thing while a plot unravels around him.
(After Sheik, Zant and now that dude from Skyward Sword how long do you think it’ll take until Gackt models for a character?)