Fans of Nintendo‘s (highly popular) fantasy game, The Legend of Zelda, will be disappointed.
A series of fake promotional posters recently « revealed » the cast of a live-action Zelda series apparently developed for Netflix. On Twitter, these doctored, AI-generated posters created by user Dan Leveille quickly gained traction. Leveille tweeted the images with an imagined cast: Tom Holland as Link, Emma Watson as Zelda, Idris Elba as Ganon, Maisie Williams as Saria, Meryl Streep as Twinrova, Gemma Chan as Great Fairy…and the list goes on.
The posters are fairly realistic, and come complete with the Netflix logo. But Leveille even pointed out that they aren’t legitimate: « JK, » he wrote. He said he used Midjourney, an independent research lab focused on design, infrastructure and AI to make the images, with the help of Dall-E, the widely-known AI system creating realistic art, research lab Tencent Arc, and Photoshop.
Despite these details, many took the posters as a sign that the Netflix series and accompanying cast were authentic. News spread fast and interest in Zelda burgeoned online, with an array of reactions from loyal fans.
Those who later realized the posters were an exercise in fantasy also had their say. « You suck for toying with my emotions. But this would be a very very cool idea, » one tweeted, while another user wrote « Dammit I thought this was real!! ». Some applauded the fictional cast: « Imagine if this were real tho. Emma Watson as Zelda would have been real cool ».
Still, a live-action Zelda series is allegedly in the works. In 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that Netflix was « working closely » with Nintendo to develop the television series, though Netflix themselves declined to comment on the « rumor ».
Perhaps Twitter will play a role in making the series actually come to life. But for now, it’s still nothing more than a pipe dream.
