Alice Asylum will never see the light of day.
Despite the overflowing excitement of Mysterious Studios, a 414-page graphic bible, and an announcement of a collaboration with Virtuos, Electronic Arts was not convinced to shell out $50 million to start development of Alice Asylum:
After several weeks of review, EA provided a response regarding the funding and/or licensing of Alice Asylum. In terms of funding, the company ultimately decided not to proceed with the project based on internal analysis of the intellectual property, market conditions, and production proposal details. In terms of licensing, the company responded that Alice is an important part of the game catalog that EA owns and that sales or licensing is not possible at this time. At the moment, we have exhausted all the possibilities of creating a new Alice game. With these answers provided by EA, there is no other way to move the project forward.
Note that the American publisher Electronic Arts initially contacted American McGee in 2018 to prepare a new game Alice. .. The cruel fate of a license that cannot return to the hands of its creator.
American McGee leaves Alice Asylum
After the cancellation of Alice Asylum and loss of motivation, American McGee decided to leave the world of video games to devote himself to the family business:
I’ve reached a breaking point with Alice and with game production in general. I no longer have the ideas or energy to devote myself to creating a new Alice game. I’m also not interested in implementing new game ideas in the context of the current game development environment. This goes back to a statement I made a few years ago that prompted EA to contact me to ask if I would like to consider making a new Alice game… I do not control Alice’s IP address and cannot create a new one. This control and ability wholly owned by EA. If anyone manages to convince EA to create Asylum, I want to clarify that from now on, I have no desire to participate in this game or any other development related to Alice. My participation in Alice also ended.