They say to let sleeping dogs lie, but one sleeping dog has lain down for a bit too long. Donnie Yen’s Sleeping Dogs adaptation is no more, the actor told Polygon this week.

Fans of the 2012 Hong Kong-set action game have been waiting for years for an update on a live-action film adaptation. First announced in 2017, the Sleeping Dogs movie was to star Yen, who rose to international fame in the Ip Man franchise and made a Hollywood splash in Rogue One, as game protagonist Wei Shen. In 2018, Yen said the movie was “in motion,” and at one point, Indonesian gore maestro Timo Tjahjanto (The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays) was in talks to direct.

That would have been quite the appealing combination of talent for an adaptation of a beloved game, but as Yen shared on a Zoom call this week, the project is no longer in the works — at least as far as the Hong Kong legend is concerned.

“I spent a lot of time and did a lot of work with these producers, and I even invested some of my own money into obtaining the drafts and some of the rights,” Yen said. “I waited for years. Years. And I really want to do it. I have all these visions in my head, and unfortunately… I don’t know, you know how Hollywood goes, right? I spent many, many years on it. It was an unfortunate thing.

“Well, on to better things.”