8 Cancelled Video Game Movies That Would Have Changed Everything

Nintendo's attempts to break into Hollywood with Super Mario Bros was always going to end in disaster. The concept of two plumbers who battle a dragon in a kingdom of mushrooms was never going to lend itself well to cinematic adaptation, especially with a Briton and a Latino playing the two Italian-American leads.

The property the Big N should have used to enter the movie industry was Metroid, which has always been as ripe for adaptation as Halo, and it almost saw the logic in this in 2004.

Face/Off director John Woo acquired the screen rights to Metroid that year and began plotting how to bring Samus Aran to the big screen with the folks at Nintendo.

But the gaming giant was cautious after Super Mario Bros Bob-ombed at the box office, and didn't want to see another of its properties suffer the same fate. Creative differences between Woo and Nintendo were reported at the time, with the two parties unable to agree on how Samus should be portrayed outside of the action scenes.

With a director of Woo's pedigree at the helm, Metroid would have delivered hard-hitting action sequences and a strong female protagonist who doesn't rely on cheap titillation to turn a profit at the box office.

There were few official updates after Woo was reported to have landed the rights and Samus's Hollywood career quietly died a slow death behind the scenes.