Well, it seems the inevitable has happened. Nintendo has asked the team behind the Lost in Hyrule film to stop working on the project, and the film has therefore been cancelled.
It’s an unfortunate situation for Zelda fans, and one which leaves them without the excellent fan film hinted at in the reveal trailer.
Sadly, it was always going to happen. As ambitious as the Lost in Hyrule project was, the campaign just put the team in Nintendo’s crosshairs in every way possible.
For example, they had a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the film. This was the worst possible things you could do for a fan project, and likely drew Nintendo to the project like a red rag to a bull. Yes, the money wasn’t going to the team here. The project was apparently a non-profit endeavour, with all funds raised being solely to finish the film…
But it doesn’t really matter. As far as Nintendo was concerned, the team was making money off Nintendo’s property. It was like selling a fan game for 50 bucks, or going around wearing a huge neon sign saying “sue me, I’m breaking the law”.
And that was only part of the problem here. Another part was that for better or worse, the film was being made at the worst possible time for a live-action Zelda fan film.
Namely, a time when the official live-action Zelda fan film was also in production.
Yeah, Nintendo recently announced that they were teaming up with Arad Productions Inc and Sony Pictures to make a Legend of Zelda film, with Wes Ball directing and Avi Arad producing the movie alongside Shigeru Miyamoto.
So, by announcing a fan-made Zelda movie at the same time, the team were playing with fire to say the least. They were running the risk of people confusing their work with an official product, and directly competing with it at the same time. Not a situation that Nintendo would be too happy with; that’s for sure.
Add to this all the press coverage and marketing the film got (Nintendo Life wrote an article, GameXplain interviewed the team, etc), and well, everything that could possibly go against a fan project in a situation like this did exactly that. They raised money for a project that directly competed with an official product, and got a ton of public attention and hype as a result.
It was less a case of playing with fire, and more a case of playing around with a flamethrower in an explosives depot.
Regardless, it’s a shame to see nonetheless. Lost in Hyrule looked like an excellent fan effort overall, and one that could have been a really interesting adaptation of the franchise into live-action. Director Chris Carpenter was certainly passionate about the series, and with folks like BanditGames getting involved in some capacity, it’s clear the project was a labour of love through and through.
It just happened at the worst possible time, and got the worst kind of attention because of that.
So, here’s hoping their future projects go well, and whatever films they work on after this can go unhindered. Because the team had talent here, they just put it into the riskiest possible proposition on the planet.
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