I think the devil may cry movie has been in the works for years. I remember reading about it back in 09.
How long dos it take to make an animated movie again?
Being as facebook decided to become an asinine whore of a thing, and make me go complete a 'security check" to login from my other computer, I can't go try and wring this info out of a person who probably knows how movie options/development works
But from what I've seen, anecdotally, properties are just bought up as a matter of course. Somebody goes "Oh hey people seem to like this, we should option the rights". Whether or not they ever get around to actually doing it is, seemingly, another story.
So its possible they just never started production at all. That probably applies to a lot of things in this thread.
Or hell, hasn't there been an "upcoming" castlevania movie forever? Some executive recognized the name, figured it might make some cash sooner or later, and decided to snap it up before the competition.
edit: Silent Hill, I'm like..80 to 90% sure, experienced a similar thing where for the longest time there were rumblings "oh they'll make a movie" and then years and years later it came out. I dunno because I was actually avoiding any news about it, dreading the outcome...which...I ended up being surprisingly pleased with all things considered.