Last week's cancellation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (the "Remake" part of the title was dropped in 2024) really sucked for fans of the series who've been waiting years for Ubisoft to finally finish and release it. It sucked a whole lot more for people who worked on it, including voice actor Eman Ayaz, who called its cancellation "the most devastating moment of my career."
"Three years ago, I booked a life-changing role on a life-changing project," Ayaz says at the start of the video. "It was a rigorous audition process, including a self tape audition, an in-person call back, and then a chemistry read that I had to fly out of the city for.
Instead, the whole thing was shut down—and making matters worse, Ayaz didn't hear about the canellation from Ubisoft, but from her brother, who asked her about it after reading a report about Ubisoft's restructuring last week. Prior to that, everything seemed fine: Ayaz said she'd filmed marketing for the game within the last couple months, and the team was looking forward to The Sands of Time launching later this year. The cancellation left her "in total shock," Ayaz said: Getting the role felt like an affirmation of her talent and "brought out what I honestly believe is the best performance of my career, and now nobody is ever going to see that."
It's not just a question of disappointment—the cancellation has serious practical implications for her career. Applying for a visa to work in the US (Ayaz is Canadian) "is no longer an option," which is doubly punishing when roles for South Asian Muslim women are so scarce to begin with. Ayaz remains under NDA so she can't even talk about the project in any details, and she can't share any of her work publicly so it does her no good as far as helping to secure future employment. It is, she says, "as if it never existed."
Ayaz called out risk aversion in the entertainment industry, saying "it snuffs out the audience's opportunity to experience fresh creative ventures, to respond to something daring, because we've just assumed their disinterest before they've even had the opportunity to react for themselves. And at times like these, it feels like marginalized stories are the first to be cut because they're deemed non-essential."
"Sadly, the entertainment industry is not really just about entertainment. It's about guaranteeing a cash flow. And that means making decisions that treat people's lives as collateral damage and art as disposable content."
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time seemed a sure-fire win for Ubisoft, a company desperately in need of one, and one person claiming to be a developer on the game said on Reddit recently, as Ayaz did, that it was indeed close to release. But close is not the same as ready, the purported dev continued, and "sometimes leadership decides stopping the bleeding is cheaper than releasing something they're not confident in, even if it hurts and feels wasteful from the outside."
And Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time did exist, Ayaz says, even if it will never be seen, and despite everything, that matters. "So many talented artists devoted countless hours of their lives to make this happen. And that doesn't just disappear. It'll be in our hearts forever, as freaking corny as that sounds. And this project taught me what I'm capable of. It showed me true joy, passion, kinship, artistry. Those things I'm going to keep with me forever. Those things will serve as the flame to keep me going."
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