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00:00I only hope that one day I'd be able to steal something a little more precious than an antique watch.
00:05Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're taking a look at 20 cancelled movies and TV shows based on our favorite video games.
00:13You and I see change the air mixture, not me.
00:16Why should I trust you?
00:18Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long.
00:21So be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:26Castlevania
00:28All the stories say the man who lives here has secret knowledge.
00:32I am Vlad Dracula Tepes, and I do not get many visitors.
00:38Long before Netflix gave us a stellar four season show, we were due for a Castlevania movie sometime in the late 2000s.
00:45The movie was to be produced by Rogue Pictures, who were best known for Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz at the time.
00:52Unfortunately, two major events disrupted the production.
00:55The Writers Guild of America strike of 2007 and 2008, and Relativity Media's acquisition of the studio in 2009.
01:04Those close to the project have also stated that the Castlevania movie had simply spent too much time in pre-production,
01:11going through several rewrites before Rogue scrapped the project altogether in 2009.
01:16I do know this last kindness in her name.
01:20She who loved you humans and cared for your ills.
01:24Assassin's Creed II
01:30Though Assassin's Creed had already seen a few short films before, the 2016 movie had a ton of hype behind it.
01:37Unfortunately, this hype led to one of the biggest box office bombs of 2016.
01:42Despite making double its budget back, Assassin's Creed did not recoup all of its costs in other areas like marketing,
01:49nor did it see a single rave review.
01:52While 20th Century Fox did greenlight a sequel, Disney reversed that decision after it acquired the corporation in 2019.
02:00And it wasn't just one sequel that was planned before the first movie was even out, there were supposed to be two sequels.
02:06Not everything deserves to live.
02:07I can't do this.
02:12Bubsy
02:16Bubsy might be one of the oldest tales of don't count your chickens before they hatch in video games.
02:21With the rise of platforming mascots in the 90s, Bubsy was planned to be the next big thing.
02:27Thing is, you can't plan for success.
02:30That didn't stop Coleco Entertainment and Imagination Factory from creating an entire
02:35pilot episode for a TV series starring the obnoxious Bobcat and sponsored by Taco Bell.
02:42Unsurprisingly, nobody liked this.
02:45Not even Rob Paulson, who voiced Bubsy in this pilot.
02:50With no one wanting to pick it up and fund a full season,
02:53Bubsy never got another episode for the would-be series.
02:57George Romero's Resident Evil
03:06One of the most interesting points in Resident Evil history was when we almost got a movie made by famed horror filmmaker George A. Romero.
03:14Initially, this sounded like a match made in heaven between a hit zombie video game franchise
03:20and a famed zombie filmmaker, the granddaddy of zombies, the inventor of zombies.
03:25And since we learned about Capcom almost hiring Romero for a Resident Evil movie,
03:30fans have been begging for this to come to fruition.
03:33Alas, no.
03:34Romero worked on several drafts, each one being rejected over rating concerns.
03:40For context, the movie would have received an NC-17 rating with each draft.
03:45Eventually, the project went to Paul W.S. Anderson,
03:48and we got the Resident Evil movies that we know today.
03:51Romero's current script can be viewed from the University of Pittsburgh Library
03:56via the George A. Romero Archival Collection.
04:04Drake of the 99 Dragons
04:14If you weren't aware of this game,
04:15Drake of the 99 Dragons was and still is one of the worst video games ever made.
04:22Released back in 2003 for the original Xbox,
04:25the game was universally scrutinized for its awful controls,
04:28poor voice acting, and overall broken technical state.
04:32However, much like Bubsy,
04:34the developers were counting their chickens before they hatched,
04:37thinking Drake of the 99 Dragons was going to be a guaranteed hit.
04:41Plans were in place for a comic book series, as well as an animated series.
04:46But once the reviews started rolling in,
04:48those plans were suddenly tossed in the trash, and honestly, probably for the best.
04:59The Legend of Spyro 3D
05:02Once upon a time, Activision did want Spyro to be the next pop culture icon,
05:09and another company wanted to help make that happen.
05:11While Activision's own studios toiled away on the games,
05:15the Animation Picture Company acquired the movie rights to Spyro in 2007,
05:19with plans to release The Legend of Spyro 3D sometime in 2009.
05:24The project went totally dark until 2022,
05:28when a movie poster and the script for the movie leaked online.
05:32At the time of this video, not much else is known about the movie aside from these two assets,
05:38along with speculation over what the budget was set to.
05:41The Bioshock
05:54Speaking of budgets, this was a major concern for the Bioshock movie back in the late 2000s.
05:59After the massive success of the original Bioshock,
06:02Universal Pictures announced a movie adaptation in 2008,
06:06and would include Ken Levine as well as 2K Games during production.
06:10Sadly, the commercial failure of 2009's Watchmen
06:13caused Universal to get cold feet after going over the project's proposed $200 million budget.
06:19Changes prompted a swap of directors and a new script,
06:22which Levine rejected due to how the project wasn't shaping up to capture the essence of Bioshock.
06:28Universal then left the decision up to Levine whether the project should move forward or not.
06:32Levine wound up pulling the plug on the entire thing.
06:40Hey! Hey, you! Hold up there a minute, you guys!
06:44Given how few games there are in the franchise,
06:47we're not sure who was expecting Klonoa to get his very own movie.
06:51As absurd as it sounds, yes, Klonoa was planned to receive a movie adaptation,
06:57the announcement being made in October 2016.
07:00California-based company Henshin confirmed their plans at TIFFCOM that year
07:05only for the project to go dark over the next two years.
07:08Eventually, those who were eager to see the project finished received bad news in January 2019.
07:14Hitoshi Ariga, who was hired to write the movie,
07:17revealed that the Klonoa film had been cancelled.
07:20Ariga did not specify any particular reasons as to why the project was canned.
07:25I have to tell you something.
07:28You see, you really...
07:31Well, you really don't exist in this world.
07:34Raving Rabbids
07:38Oh!
07:42We're not quite sure what has happened with this project,
07:45but we doubt it's even in development anymore, let alone active development.
07:49In 2014, Ubisoft and Columbia Pictures announced a live-action animated hybrid movie
07:55starring the Rabbids with a release window for 2016.
07:59Well, 2016 came and went with not a peep regarding where the movie was in production.
08:04Then, in 2019, Ubisoft came out with Lionsgate to announce another Rabbids movie,
08:10with robot chicken creator Stupid Buddy Studios on board to write and animate the movie.
08:16Well, here we are in 2024,
08:18and neither movie has made its presence known since their announcements.
08:22I think it's safe to say they're both canned, guys.
08:24Doom 2, hell on earth.
08:28Time for this old marine to retire.
08:31I love you, and Bernadette.
08:34Remember the 2005 movie Doom?
08:36Remember how awful it was with its writing, acting, and that one CGI shot
08:41that was supposed to be like the video games?
08:44Yeah, we were supposed to get a sequel to that,
08:46and no, it is not 2019 Doom.
08:50Yeah, we were supposed to get a sequel to that,
08:52and no, it is not 2019's Doom Annihilation.
08:56No, there was a completely different sequel planned,
08:59and it was planned while the first movie was still in production.
09:03Care to guess why Doom 2, hell on earth was axed?
09:06Yep, it was because the first movie was a commercial and critical disaster.
09:11We'll give it credit, though.
09:12We'll take the 2005 movie over whatever the hell Annihilation was supposed to be.
09:20Oh, you son of a gun.
09:25Netflix's Horizon.
09:27When you said we were going to go hunting,
09:28I didn't realize you meant I'd have to track you down.
09:31With PlayStation Productions having a pretty solid track record with Projects and Partners,
09:35many of us were somewhat excited for Netflix's own Horizon TV series.
09:40Unfortunately, this show would be cancelled not for reasons relating to the games,
09:44but reasons relating to the showrunner.
09:46When the show was announced in May 2022,
09:49Netflix and Sony had already chosen someone to serve as showrunner,
09:53Steve Blackman, who had seen great success with the Umbrella Academy TV series.
09:58But in June 2024, Blackman came under fire as numerous allegations cropped up
10:03about Blackman creating a toxic work environment.
10:06Details were not shared as to who chose to pull the plug,
10:09though Sony is now looking for a new partnership, most likely.
10:13Why are you talking like we'll never see each other again?
10:16Driver
10:27Can you believe it, a third Ubisoft IP failing to move forward with a movie or TV adaptation?
10:33February 2002 marked the beginning of a long pre-production phase
10:37for the Driver movie that was to be directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
10:41However, the project seemed to have suffered repeated delays
10:45as it made incredibly slow progress over the next five years.
10:48The project has gone completely silent since with the script being leaked online in 2009.
10:54A Driver TV series was announced in 2021,
10:57but that was canned less than two months after its announcement.
11:07Plants vs. Zombies
11:09Hard to believe we haven't seen a Plants vs. Zombies cartoon of any kind.
11:13In 2015, a website known as The Tracking Board revealed supposedly exclusive news
11:20about a Plants vs. Zombies movie being in development.
11:23Oddly enough, no one else but We Got This Covered seemed to have reported on this news,
11:28let alone confirm it.
11:29It wasn't until 2022, when concept art for the movie was leaked online,
11:34No one knows why the movie was canned in the first place,
11:36though it is believed that DreamWorks was set to produce the movie.
11:48Sly Cooper
11:49Everybody be cool. I'm on it.
11:55The Sly Cooper movie is another anomaly that may never get a resounding conclusion.
12:00Here we are over a decade later since that teaser,
12:04and there has been no word as to where the movie is, why it missed its window,
12:09or even if the project is still ongoing.
12:11It doesn't help that a Sly Cooper TV series was announced a year after the movie's supposed
12:16release window.
12:17That means the movie is still in the works,
12:20but it's been a long time since it's been released.
12:22It's been a long time since we've seen a Sly Cooper movie,
12:25but it's been a long time since we've seen a Sly Cooper movie.
12:29That, too, has been MIA since its announcement,
12:33as Sony has not said a word about the movie nor the show.
12:37Rainmaker, the folks behind the movie, left the film project in 2017,
12:42citing the failure of the 2016 movie Ratcheting Plank that caused the company to re-evaluate
12:48itself.
12:48As for the TV show, like I said, no one knows what's going on with that.
12:59Rollercoaster Tycoon
13:04How on earth do you even make a movie based on Rollercoaster Tycoon?
13:08We're not quite sure ourselves, but there was a time where Sony Pictures
13:12had some idea on how to approach the idea.
13:15In 2010, Sony announced it had acquired the film rights to Rollercoaster Tycoon,
13:20only to then never speak about it again.
13:23Supposedly, the movie did get super deep into production before the whole thing was scrapped.
13:29We're curious to see what exactly Sony Pictures came up with,
13:32but chances are we'll never know outside of the fact that this existed at one point.
13:41Mortal Kombat Devastation
13:43Well, there's a slow way, and there's a fast way.
13:48We don't have time for the slow way!
13:51That's what I thought you'd say.
13:53Believe it or not, there was a moment where we were supposed to get a third Mortal Kombat movie
13:57back in the New Line Cinema era.
13:59However, no one knew about this until after some legal troubles began to boil up for Midway Games.
14:05As Midway navigated through its bankruptcy filing,
14:08Lawrence Kasanoff, producer of both the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie and its sequel,
14:13sued Midway in an effort to retain the film rights to the IP.
14:17During this lawsuit, Kasanoff had stated that a third movie was still in the works,
14:21and that his company should retain the rights to Mortal Kombat without Warner Bros. involvement.
14:26Kasanoff ultimately lost the case and the film rights,
14:29and Warner Bros. became the new owner of Mortal Kombat.
14:33Prepare for final battle!
14:36Twisted Metal
14:43Long before PlayStation Productions was ever a thing,
14:45Twisted Metal did have plans to not be a TV show on Peacock, but a full-fledged movie.
14:51Right when Twisted Metal launched on PS3 in 2012,
14:54Sony announced a Twisted Metal movie was in development with Brian Taylor as the writer
15:00and once again, as we saw with Sly Cooper and Rollercoaster Tycoon,
15:04this would be the first, last, and only time Sony would ever say anything about the project.
15:11Perhaps they realized Taylor's awful track record with movies like Ghost Rider,
15:15Spirit of Vengeance, Jonah Hex, and Gamer were not exactly great pieces to go off of.
15:21Or maybe it had something to do with the new game turning out to be a financial failure.
15:25Either way, we got the Twisted Metal TV show now and it is a thrill.
15:30If you put the gun down, I'll drop you off as close as I can to where you're going, deal?
15:35Fine.
15:35Netflix's Star Fox and The Legend of Zelda
15:40Link, finally awake.
15:43Unlike Sony, Nintendo definitely keeps its cards close to its chest
15:48and prefers everybody be on guard at the same level.
15:51Apparently, someone at Netflix may not have understood that
15:55because in 2015, one Netflix staff member leaked the news of a new Legend of Zelda show
16:01premiering on Netflix.
16:03The show had not yet been announced, but Nintendo was so furious
16:07that they cancelled all plans a month after they had already struck a deal.
16:11This leak not only robbed fans of a Zelda TV show,
16:15but also a stop-motion animated series based on Star Fox.
16:20Given that Sony Pictures is working on a Zelda movie as of 2024,
16:23we highly doubt Nintendo is ever going to work with Netflix ever again.
16:28Zelda...
16:32You...
16:33Who carries that fragile sword, a Link?
16:37Crash Bandicoot
16:39Crash will fight to save her!
16:40He'll never surrender!
16:41He'll vanquish any villain to set his girlfriend free!
16:44By now, you've probably heard about how there was supposed to be an animated Crash series
16:49back in the 90s during the original game's development.
16:51It didn't move forward after Sony picked up publishing rights,
16:54which caused Universal to lose interest in the potential of a show.
16:58However, there was another attempt to make an animated Crash Bandicoot series.
17:02In 2021, a Reddit post leaked an animation test for an unknown Crash Bandicoot cartoon.
17:08Turns out that Amazon Studios and Activision were working on an animated series for the
17:13marsupial at one point.
17:15What killed the project allegedly were internal conflicts over the show's direction.
17:19Not much else is known about the series, and now, internet sleuths within the Bandicoot's
17:25fandom are investigating to figure out what exactly happened.
17:28And guess what?
17:29We don't have answers at the time of this video.
17:32People are still trying to find other people.
17:35Crash Bandicoot!
17:37If Cortex isn't beaten, he'll reign absolute!
17:40Halo
17:40That was a joke.
17:41Yeah, no, I got it.
17:43Hilarious.
17:45There was a point where maybe we wouldn't have had such an abysmal TV adaptation like
17:50Paramount's Halo.
17:51We could have gotten a brand new movie instead.
17:54You could say 2005 was the start of what could have been a movie-making dream team.
17:59You had a bold new future for Halo in a different medium.
18:03Alex Garland was the writer, Peter Jackson was the producer, and Neil Blomkamp was the
18:09director.
18:09However, pre-production restarted so many times that it caused the movie's investors
18:15to grow agitated.
18:16Once 20th Century Fox threatened to pull their funding, Universal Studios got involved and
18:21told Jackson and Columbia Pictures president Peter Schlessel to reduce their percentage
18:26of box office revenue or the project gets canned.
18:30Although Jackson and Schlessel chose to nuke the entire thing, many of the props and set
18:35pieces would be reused for the 2009 film District 9.
18:40Guys, he's got a leash!
18:44Were you hoping to see any of these shows and movies before they got the axe?
18:48Let us know down in the comments and be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays for more great
18:52videos every day.