Nintendo was reportedly planning on releasing TV shows based on its hit Legend of Zelda and Star Fox franchises but ended up canceling them because someone at Netflix couldn’t keep their mouth shut. That’s according to comedian and voice actor Adam Conover, who published a video yesterday claiming that these adaptations were definitely in the works and would have been of the live-action and claymation variety, respectively.
“In 2015 there was this news that Netflix was going to make a Legend of Zelda television show… it was supposed to be live-action show and it got a lot of coverage in the gaming press,” Conover said in a transcription provided by VGC. “At the same time I worked at CollegeHumor and we had a secret project where we were going to make a claymation version of Star Fox with Nintendo. I know this because Shigeru Miyamoto came to our office and I remember that because I asked my boss if I could be in the office that day… he told me ‘no’ and I’m still mad at him.”
“A month later, suddenly there were reports that Netflix wasn’t going to do Legend of Zelda anymore… I was like, ‘what happened?’ And then I heard from my boss that we weren’t going to do Star Fox anymore. I thought that was weird, so I asked him what happened and he said, ‘oh, someone at Netflix leaked the Legend of Zelda thing… Nintendo freaked out’.”
“It was the first time they had done any IP in years for any product, they had no adaptation of any kind. But when Netflix leaked it, they freaked out and pulled the plug on everything. They pulled the plug on the entire program to adapt these things.”
“What happened was Netflix leaked this and ended up killing the whole project… why would you leak something like that? Because you’re excited to brag about it but then the whole project falls apart. Come on! What are you doing?”
It isn’t clear what Nintendo was “freaked out” about, as the gaming world would have found out more about the Legend of Zelda and Star Fox adaptations in one way or another anyway, but this is definitely disappointing news for fans of these legendary franchises. The live-action Zelda TV series was described by leakers as a show in the vein of HBO’s Game of Thrones, but for family audiences.