Nintendo is creating a "Zelda" film as part of a recent entertainment push

 Nintendo is creating a "Zelda" film as part of a recent entertainment push

This year, Nintendo's animated "Super Mario Bros." film was an enormous hit, proving the value of video game adaptions at the box office and boosting sales of the company's aging Switch system.

On Wednesday, Kyoto-based Nintendo announced that it would produce a live-action movie based on the popular "The Legend of Zelda" brand. This is the company's latest attempt to go outside of the video game industry.

This year, Nintendo's animated "Super Mario Bros." film was an enormous hit, proving the value of video game adaptions at the box office and boosting sales of the company's aging Switch system.

Producers Shigeru Miyamoto (who created "Super Mario") and Avi Arad (who has produced films including "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse") will produce the movie.

Nintendo has posted on social media that the two guys have been working on a "Zelda" movie adaptation for a long time, but the film will take time.

Co-financed by Nintendo and Sony, two companies who are both had success adapting video game titles, the "Zelda" movie will be helmed by Wes Ball, whose credits include the forthcoming "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes."

Nearly 40 years after the first game in the series, Nintendo said on Tuesday that it has sold 19.5 million copies of the most recent "Zelda" title as of September's end.

Nintendo's primary source of revenue is still gaming, but in the first half of this fiscal year, revenues in its mobile and IP-related businesses more than quadrupled to 55 billion yen ($365.86 million).

The creation of the "Zelda" film coincides with a worldwide resurgence of interest in Japanese franchise adaptations; one such example is Netflix's recent release of an adaptation of the venerable pirate manga series "One Piece".