The Super Mario Bros. movie came out in 2023 and grossed well over a billion dollars at the box office. After that kind of success, it didn't take long for Nintendo to announce it was working on a new movie based on another of its iconic video game franchises: The Legend of Zelda. Unlike the Mario movie, this one will be live-action.
The Legend of Zelda movie is due out in 2027, which means we'll probably be getting news about casting and such soon. We haven't heard anything about who might play Link, the sword-weilding hero of the franchise, although we have our ideas. However, industry reporter and rumor-monger Daniel Richtman recently reported that Euphoria star Hunter Schafer is being considered for the role of Princess Zelda.
Fans started suggesting Schafer for the role of Zelda shortly after the movie was announced, and it's easy to see why; as you can see in the photo above, she does kind of look like the Hylian princess, no imagination needed.
Hunter Schafer being Princess Zelda in the Legend of Zelda movie is just peak casting pic.twitter.com/Ap9MG0Y1vr
— Editor ColeTrainHere 🚂✨ (@ColeTrainHere) May 30, 2025
In 2023, Schafer told Entertainment Tonight that it would be “so cool” to play that role, so she's aware that this is in the air. “I played that video game a bunch when I was a kid. That’s such a good game,” she said. I'm not sure which of the 30,000 Legend of Zelda games released since the '80s she's talking about there, but the die has been cast.
In addition to Euphoria, Hunter Schafer made an impression in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, among other film and TV roles. She seems to be a good pick, but there's a controversy: Hunter Schafer is a trans woman, which is inspiring the kind of discussion online you'd think it would inspire. Glancing through some of the chatter on Twitter, even some of the transphobes begrudgingly admit that Schafer at least looks the part.
Will this casting actually happen? An insider reporting a rumor isn't the same thing as a confirmation, something no one involved with the movie has actually given: not Nintendo, not Sony Pictures, not director Wes Ball, and not Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who is co-producing the movie alongside Avi Arad. But I think we'll start getting official announcements in the near-ish future.
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h/t The Independent