Lydia Peckham Joins Zelda Movie as NZ Talent Takes Center Stage

New Zealand actress Lydia Peckham has joined the cast of Nintendo and Sony’s live-action The Legend of Zelda movie in an undisclosed role, Deadline reported exclusively. The addition reunites her with director Wes Ball after she played the ape Soona in 2024’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and caps a rapid week of casting reveals for the film that wrapped principal photography in April.

Studios declined comment and her representatives could not be reached. The news arrives with the worldwide theatrical date locked and production complete, shifting focus to how much of Hyrule’s supporting world has been filled by performers from the same region that hosted the shoot.

A Week That Filled Half the Known Cast

Before this stretch of scoops, the only confirmed names since last summer were the two leads. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth plays Link and Bo Bragason plays Princess Zelda. Everything else stayed sealed under the production codename Umami.

Deadline’s run of exclusives changed that in days. Australian actor Uli Latukefu landed the villain Ganondorf. Dichen Lachman, known for Severance, takes Impa, the bodyguard and advisor to Zelda. Yvonne Strahovski plays a queen character. Sam Neill appears in one of his final screen roles; he died on July 13, 2026, at 78 after filming completed. Peckham’s casting arrived next.

The pattern is hard to miss once the names sit together. Multiple key supporting parts went to performers with deep ties to Australia and New Zealand.

New Zealand and Australian Names Anchor the Company

Peckham and Neill both come from New Zealand. Latukefu and Strahovski are Australian. Lachman has long been based there. For fans in the region the week read like a home-game roll call rather than a Hollywood import list.

That local weight extends past the call sheet. Principal photography ran from November 2025 through April 2026 across Wellington, Glenorchy near Queenstown, and Central Otago’s Poolburn Dam country. These are the same stretches of land Peter Jackson used for The Lord of the Rings. Gyula Pados served as cinematographer. The production treated the terrain as a practical asset rather than a greenscreen fallback.

• Wellington as the production base under the Umami codename
• Glenorchy and surrounding Otago country for large outdoor sequences
• Poolburn Dam area adding the stark open landscapes familiar from earlier fantasy shoots

Crowds online noted the trajectory for Peckham specifically. One reply to Deadline’s post called out her emotional range as the human character in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and called the move to Hyrule a solid next step. The observation lands because Ball already trusted her with motion-capture intensity and now brings her into a live-action fantasy he has described as grounded and real.

How Peckham Reached This Point

Peckham grew up partly in Scotland and France before settling in New Zealand at age eight. She trained at Nelson College for Girls and Toi Whakaari. Early screen work included an episode of Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop and Apple’s Mr. Corman.

Her breakthrough to larger audiences came as Soona in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. She landed the role with a self-filmed audition tape shot from a tree in her family’s apple orchard in Nelson, camera bunny-tied to a branch. Six weeks of ape training with Cirque du Soleil choreographer Alain Gauthier followed, then filming in Australia.

Since then the slate has stayed full. She appears as journalist Lila in Nuremberg, Priscilla of Nottingham in the MGM+ Robin Hood series opposite Sean Bean’s Sheriff, and Monica Robichaux in the Prime Video action comedy The Wrecking Crew with Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa. She recently finished Netflix’s The Kennedys playing Rosemary Kennedy. her recent credits span historical drama and action across streaming and theatrical releases.

CAA, Atlas Artists and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller represent her. The Zelda job fits a performer moving quickly from supporting turns into franchise territory while staying connected to the director who first scaled her up.

Wes Ball’s Preference for Grounded Fantasy

Ball came to the project after the Maze Runner films and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. He has said he wanted Zelda to feel serious and cool yet fun and whimsical, with a Studio Ghibli-adjacent spirit rather than heavy motion-capture spectacle. New Zealand’s varied terrain gave him practical backdrops that match that brief.

T.S. Nowlin wrote the most recent screenplay draft after earlier work by Derek Connolly. Nintendo and Arad Productions launched the project in November 2023 with Shigeru Miyamoto and Avi Arad producing alongside Ball and Joe Hartwick Jr. Sony co-financed (Nintendo holding more than 50 percent) and handles worldwide distribution through Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Releasing.

Miyamoto has stayed visibly involved. In May he posted that the team had moved the worldwide release to April 30, 2027 from the previous May 7 date, citing the desire to deliver the film sooner. An earlier shift had moved it from a March 26 target for production reasons. The franchise itself has sold more than 150 million units since 1986.

This is Miyamoto. I would like to let you know that the worldwide theatrical release date for the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda has been moved up to April 30, 2027, from May 7. The team is working hard to deliver the film to everyone as soon as possible.

The statement came directly from Nintendo’s official account and underscored how tightly the company keeps creative control.

Secrecy Held Until Production Closed

Casting stayed unusually quiet. Leads Ainsworth and Bragason were announced in July 2025 with three costume photos released later that November. No further names surfaced publicly until the August 2026 cluster of Deadline stories, months after cameras stopped.

What We Know

• Leads Link and Zelda locked and partially shown in 2025 photos
• Ganondorf, Impa and a queen role now attributed
• Filming complete across multiple South Island and Wellington sites
• Release date advanced to the last Friday in April 2027

What’s Unconfirmed

• Peckham’s exact character
• Neill’s specific part
• Whether additional major roles remain unreported
• First-look footage or trailer timing

The delay in leaks suggests deliberate compartmentalization rather than absence of casting. Once the lid cracked, multiple confirmed pieces arrived together. Online conversation treated the flood as both overdue and carefully timed after the physical production risk had passed.

Local Stakes Run Deeper Than One Name

Peckham’s hiring is the latest data point, not an isolated win. The combination of New Zealand locations that already carry epic-fantasy visual memory, a director who prefers practical environments, and a supporting cast heavy with Antipodean performers gives the film a distinct production identity. Hyrule is being built on ground that previously stood in for Middle-earth, with actors who know that light and scale.

Whether that choice produces a film that feels fresh or simply familiar will be clear in 2027. For now the call sheet and the call sheets of the locations tell a consistent story: the people and places closest to the cameras matter as much as the global IP they serve. Peckham steps into that frame with a director she already knows and a landscape that raised her.