A few days ago the fan film project for Final Fantasy VII was pulled from Kickstarter because of a cease and desist from Square Enix. When you use a publisher's intellectual property to make your own product, said publisher normally tends to get all nervous really fast.

Despite that, the folks at Massive State decided to try their luck and took to Kickstarter to seek funding for their fan film: Metroid: Enemies Within. The film is supposed to be a ten minute short that would work as a proof of concept in order to "make a strong case" with Nintendo for the translation of the Metroid franchise into a feature film.

Samus will be played by Rebecca Marshall, while the Fight Choreographer and Stunt Coordinator will be James Young of the same Thousand Pounds Action Company that has gone viral with the Naruto live action series of shorts on Youtube.

I do find funny that "Nintendo just pulling the plug" isn't listed between the challenges in the official Kickstarter page, even if the team does mention that if it were to happen before the campaign ends no one would spend a dime:

If we receive a C&D during the course of the campaign, the project will get canceled and all contributions will automatically revert back to the donor. We will not receive any of the contributions. This is kickstarter's policy. Kickstarter will only release the money after the completion of the 30 day campaign and if it meets the target goal.

What isn't mentioned is what would happen if Nintendo were to make a move after the end of the campaign.

Below and above you can see a few concept screenshots, and three videos: the Kickstarter pitch, Rebecca Marshall doing some stunts and a sequence of preliminary storyboards. If you want to contribute to the funding, hoping that Nintendo doesn't take notice or decides not to act, you can do so here. It does look interesting, but I'll let you decide what the chances of Nintendo letting this go through are. My money is on "very unlikely".

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