Metroid Enemies Within

Two weeks ago we reported that a Kickstarter campaign emerged for a fan-made Metroid film titled Metroid: Enemies Within. Its goal was to reach $90,000 to bring the 10-minute Hollywood-style film to fruition, and had Christian Cardona on board, who has worked on shows such as Bones, Lost and 24.

There's always the issue, with these projects, of whether they have permission to utilise Nintendo IPs, so it doesn't come as a surprise to find out that the big N has whipped out its Power Beams and annihilated the project. The fundraising page has been taken down, and has been replaced with the following message:

Metroid: Enemies Within (A Metroid Fan Film) is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable.

Nintendo's DMCA was submitted to the website, outlining exactly what it was that the Kickstarter project was infringing on:

Nintendo owns copyrights in all aspects of its Metroid video game franchise and related products, including but not limited to the characters, storylines, audiovisual, pictorial and graphic works from the following: U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000356142, supp. by PA0000547461 (Metroid video game); U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000720157 (Super Metroid video game); U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0001275461 (Metroid Prime video game); U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0001275460 (Metroid Prime 2: Echos video game); U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0001633666 (Metroid Prime 3: Corruption video game); and U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0001791606 (Metroid: Other M video game).

Description of infringing material: The "Metroid: Enemies Within" film, story boards, and related materials are unauthorized derivative works that infringe Nintendo's copyrights in its Metroid property.

So that is probably that.

[source kickstarter.com, via gonintendo.com]