Last month, director and actor Chris Carpenter launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring his vision for a Legend of Zelda fan film to life. Although the campaign was moderately successful and raised approximately $24,000, it also caught the attention of Nintendo itself. Now, the Kickstarter campaign has been suspended and the Zelda fan film is no longer happening.
Via Nintendo Life, Dio Traverso–one of the film’s producers–confirmed on the Kickstarter page that the project has been shuttered and that no money will be collected from the campaign. He also thanked the film’s supporters on behalf of Carpenter and the rest of their collaborators.
Carpenter had planned to step into the role of Link opposite A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Avi Lake, who was cast as Princess Zelda. The movie was called Lost in Hyrule, and the story was set after Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask in order to bring that chapter of Link’s adventures to a close.
Nintendo is famously litigious, and even recently went after a supermarket in Costa Rica that had the name Super Mario (and lost). The Japanese gaming publisher probably would have gone after Lost in Hyrule even if it had been completed, but the Kickstarter campaign and accompanying press likely moved up the timetable for Nintendo’s legal response.
Additionally, Nintendo has its own live-action Legend of Zelda movie coming from Sony Pictures. Director Wes Ball (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) has been attached to that project since 2023, but there haven’t been any concrete updates since that time.