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Thanks to Mav Phoenix for letting us know about this yesterday in Back Page News. My apologies for not seeing this sooner. If this movie is done right, it could actually turn out to be pretty good! The story and characters are there.. lets see how well it can be translated into a movie though. Street Fighter anyone? :S

We all knew it was coming, but now it's official: Samus will star on the silver screen. Today, film industry trade publication Variety is reporting that Zide/Perry Entertainment has obtained the rights to produce the official Metroid movie.

Producers Warren Zide and Craig Perry are best known for their work bringing the American Pie and Final Destination flicks to audiences around the world. The duo is now teaming-up once again to bring the beloved Nintendo franchise into theaters everywhere. Samus now joins the ranks of Mario and Pikachu as Nintendo characters transformed into movie stars.

No release date has been set at this time as the project is still looking to bring writers and directors on board. Variety also mentions vague story details, which Metroid fans can probably already surmise: Metroids are discovered on SR388, and Samus, an intergalactic bounty hunter extraordinaire, is sent in to investigate. She soon encounters the evil Space Pirates and their plan to harness the power of these parasites and dominate the galaxy. Just imagining such a favorite plot unfolding in film form is enough to keep any Metroid fan happy until the movie is finally released.

Stay tuned to IGNcube as we bring you more news and information on this exciting Hollywood project in the near future.

News source: IGN Cube

Xbox features include:

• New monster: Mechagodzilla 3 (from the latest Godzilla® film release in Japan) joins the cast.
  
• New arenas: Vortaak Home World. The alien's home world, features new challenges like volcanoes, spaceship launchers, installation-protection missiles, and plenty of alien buildings to throw. Boxing Ring, the largest boxing ring in the world constructed for monster battles complete with ropes, bells and blimps.
  
• New Computer AI: One gamer can now play a four-player melee or team game against the Xbox Artificial Intelligence.
  
• Single-player Destruction Mode: Players can rip up a city -- all by themselves.
  
• Soundtrack support: Rip tunes to the Xbox hard drive and play your own tracks while you're fighting as your favorite giant monsters.
  
• Xbox Advantage Controls: The extra buttons on the Xbox make it easier to grab monsters and buildings. In addition, the Xbox features improved responsiveness, combos and collision detection.
  
• Better visuals: The unmatched graphical prowess of the Xbox hardware allows for better visuals treats, like reflection maps on buildings, true bump mapping, improved animations, smokestacks that emit smoke, better impact effects, specular highlights, bright high-resolution skies, improved lighting model, improved terrain, high resolution city selection movies and high resolution textures.
  
• Improved Speed: Solid frame-rate and faster loading times.
  Multiple Saved Games: Up to four players can save their progress on the Xbox hard drive.

In addition to the single-player Adventure Mode, the game includes four additional play styles: Versus Mode, a one on one epic battle royal; Destruction Mode, a timed challenge to see which player can destroy more of a city in a given amount of time; Survival Mode, the ultimate test of a player's skill, pitting him against monster after monster with the score based on the number of enemies defeated before losing a match; and Melee Mode, a one-to-four player points-based multiplayer slugfest.

The game features an epic sense of scope and scale, with 10 massive real-world and fantasy fighting arenas, including San Francisco, Tokyo and the notorious Monster Island, that are fully 3D and totally interactive. Players can pick up and throw buildings and landmarks like Big Ben, toss enemies into vast fuel tank farms and stomp on baseball stadiums. "Godzilla®: Destroy All Monsters Melee" also features additional hidden, unlockable areas only found on the Xbox(TM). Each city has been created with amazing attention to detail, including working traffic lights, blinking neon signs and moving cars, buses and tanker trucks.

More than 10 licensed monsters, each carefully modeled from the record-setting movie franchise, appear in the game including Godzilla 90's, Mechagodzilla, Megalon, Destoroyah, King Ghidorah, Mothra and many more. Each character is equipped with basic fighting maneuvers like kicks, punches, jumps, projectile attacks and blocks. For more hardcore fighting fans, "Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee" includes a robust combo system and special attacks that are unique to each creature's abilities from the original movies. Power-ups are dropped into the arena by alien ships and hidden within city buildings, providing health and other enhanced abilities.