Why would they fire the team instead of just moving everyone to other projects? Aren't the tales you hear about projects being canned and the whole team made redundant specifically due to not having the money to do the project or because some new bigwig is trying to cut costs?
Often times they're the same thing. The money comes from the owner of the IP, who contracted out the project; owner of the IP decides they don't want to do it anymore; no more money coming in to fund the people working on it.