Gail Tilden, former marketing manager at Nintendo of America, has spoken about the Metroid movie that never came to be.
It was around two decades ago that there were hopes of seeing Samus Aran on the big screen. The movie was planned to hit theaters in 2006, but that didn’t end up happening. Producer Brad Foxhoven would later reflect on what transpired, indicating that there were creative disagreements with Nintendo. The company was apparently hesitant after the 1993 Mario movie bombed and was unsure about allowing a different team to handle Samus’ origin story.
Tilden now shared insight from the Nintendo side as part of an interview with the Video Game History Foundation. While there was a lot of discussion about who would actually play Samus, it seems that no one was ever chosen definitively. Despite that, Tilden indicated that the two sides were on agreement on a potential direction for the story. The biggest thing seems to be about the budget – it would have costed a ton to make the movie, and following the poor performance of Catwoman, it seems as though that’s when it all petered out.
Tilden said the following:
“So always wanting to do – and people were always calling about doing a movie. You can imagine that the most common question is, you know, ‘We’re calling, we’d like to do a Zelda movie.’ So the answer was always no. And so, you know, even I personally said, Mr. Miyamoto, like, ‘if Steven Spielberg himself wants to do a Zelda movie, what is the answer?’ He said, ‘no.’ So that was it. The answer was always no.
But the Metroid team, which is Mr. Sakamoto, is the person who created Metroid. He also made Kid Icarus, and he’s the Wario creator and games like WarioWare, 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. And 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.”
Over the past few years, Nintendo has started to change its approach to films. The Super Mario Bros. Movie debuted in 2023 to massive success, and Nintendo is partnering with Illumination once again for another Mario flick. Also announced last year is the live-action film based on The Legend of Zelda.
