Video game history is truly littered with attempts to adapt numerous properties into various mediums like TV shows and movies. Whether it be live-action or fully animated, the results have always been…mixed. Yes, recent history has proven much kinder to gamers, such as with the Sonic movie trilogy, the Super Mario Bros animated film, and The Last of Us. However, there have also been recent duds that leave you shaking your head. Remember Borderlands? Exactly. Yet, stories of companies thinking about certain adaptations still come out, including a recent one about a Metroid movie that almost happened two decades ago.
This reveal happened via former marketing manager at Nintendo of America Gail Tilden, whom you might remember dropped a bombshell on what Pokemon almost was in the West. Anyway, they did a big interview for the Video Game History Foundation and noted that there were always requests for a Legend of Zelda movie, but Nintendo would always say “no.” Yet, when a certain someone asked to do a Metroid movie, things got interesting…
But the Metroid team, which is Mr. Sakamoto, is the person who created Metroid. Really fun guy, and he was open to pitches on Metroid. And his counterpart for Metroid Prime is Mr. Tanabe. So together, John Woo’s company, the Chinese director, had wanted to pitch to do a Metroid movie, and we had several meetings. It took a long time. We would talk sometimes about who should play Samus. Should it be Charlize Theron? No, she’s not right. Anyway, it was on and on about who the actresses that they could see as Samus, but we never settled on anything. I think they thought she’s not such a beauty, as opposed to kind of an athlete. So we had several story angles that were pitched or presented, and finally landed on something and did a pitch kit and took it out. And the level of budget that would be needed to make the movie was significant.
That makes sense, as this was a sci-fi universe set in space with loads of non-humanoid aliens for Samus Aran to fight. Even if they found the right “athlete” to portray her, it would be a heavy green screen affair. Yet, the team was up for it…until…
“At the time, the only female action movie that had come out was Halle Berry’s Catwoman, and it didn’t do well. And so the company, John Woo’s company, they pitched for Metroid, but we did not make a sale. So that is the truth of why that particular project didn’t happen.”
Seems ironic, doesn’t it? One of the worst comic book movies ever prevented an attempt to get Samus in live-action? Today, Nintendo is much more open to adaptations of their properties. So, perhaps a Metroid movie is still a possibility in our lifetime…
