Franchise: Iron Man

In 2012, developer Avalanche Studios were approached by Marvel and Disney to develop a video game based on Iron Man. The game took inspiration from Avalanche's previous work on the Just Cause series and the Batman: Arkham series, incorporating an open world approach. Despite given a two-year time frame, Disney shortened development to a year, causing a huge increase in budget as they would need to hire 70-80 new employees so the game could release on time. This eventually led to the project being cancelled as it was viewed as too high-risk. Recordings of an early build of the project would later leak in 2026.

After acquiring the license in 2001, there were two attempts by Activision to make a game based on Iron Man, though both attempts were unsuccessful.

The first game, tentatively titled "The Invincible Iron Man", was meant to serve as a loose tie-in to New Line Cinema's planned Iron Man movie from the early 2000s. Despite mixed reviews and disappointing sales for GenePool Software's previous game X2: Wolverine's Revenge, Activision were pleased with their work ethic and contracted them to produce the game. The visual style took inspiration from the 2002 limited comic series "The Ultimates", in particular Iron Man's more mech-like design, and would have featured characters like Ghost and Black Widow. Despite GenePool's efforts to hire new talent, development being six months in and the prototype testing very well, the game was abruptly cancelled in 2003. This cancellation likely stemmed from production issues with the planned Iron Man movie, which would also later be cancelled. Dave Anthony, the project lead and founder of GenePool, blamed himself for the cancellation as he felt his programming skills were not up to par and he did not have a coherent enough plan for the game.

With no publisher backing them, GenePool Software shut down in late 2003, and Activision soon began focusing on a second Iron Man game developed by Z-Axis Software. It began development in November 2003, but despite two whole years of development, this project was also canned. It's unknown if the game was related to New Line Cinema's planned Iron Man movie or not, though the movie rights to Iron Man reverted back to Marvel in 2005. The video game license would later be sold to Sega, who would publish the 2008 Iron Man game as a tie-in for the movie that year.