Long story short, the dev team at Rare were given the go ahead to develop the game, were told that all of the rights had been cleared with Nintendo. 99% of the way through development, when they had just 90 bugs left to fix ahead of release, they get told by the higher ups at Rare that the project is cancelled because the people at Nintendo who authorized the project apparently didn't have the power to do so, and some Nintendo executive sent MS a cease and desist ordering the game to be cancelled.

Someone assumed the big guy at Nintendo would sign off on it. You know what they say about people that assume.

After watching the footage. It wasn't a remake but a reskin. Animations and sound effects were all the same. You can press a button to change back to the N64 visuals instantly. Still, it looked like a nice visual update. Funny how 3 years later Nintendo at E3 announced Goldeneye Remake on Wii with DG as Bond. Nintendo was dicks to do this but at the same time, they really should have bought Rare or at least found a way to keep the IPs. Be in better hands.

Rare wanted out from Nintendo especally after Nintendo started cutting Rare's funding.

The issue is too much damage was done that when Rare moved to another owner, the company was a shell of its former self.

I think theirs a reason conker bad fur day intro chainsawed 64 logo, also heard miyamoto handicap rare but rare wanted mature games i think?

Poor form Nintendo. Poor form.
Gamers across the world are worst off because of silly company politics.