On 6 April 2023, Capcom and Legendary Entertainment officially announced that a new, live-action movie based on Street Fighter is in the works. The news comes just days after The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of Legendary’s acquisition of the rights to produce both film and TV shows from the fighting game franchise.
The news broke via the official Street Fighter Twitter account, with the promise of more details to come in the future.
The original story from 4 April 2023 follows below.
Production company Legendary Entertainment has acquired the film and TV rights to Capcom’s flagship fighting game franchise, Street Fighter, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Legendary, which is responsible for producing films such as Dune, Pokemon Detective Pikachu, Kong: Skull Island, Watchmen, Batman Begins, and several other titles, will look to work with Capcom to develop movies and TV shows based on the 30-year-old series.
This isn’t the first time Legendary has worked with Capcom. In 2015 and 2016, Legendary assisted in adapting Capcom’s zombie action video game series Dead Rising to film, with Dead Rising: Watchtower and Dead Rising: Endgame. Both received middling reviews.
Street Fighter itself has also had a mixed history when it comes to film and TV adaptations. A 1994 American live-action film was written and directed by Steven E. de Souza (writer of Die Hard and Commando), and starred the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue, Ming-Na Wen, and Raul Julia in his final on-screen role.
While the film was commercially successful, having been released at the height of Street Fighter II’s popularity, it deviated dramatically from the source material, and was not received well by critics or fans of the series at the time. However, the sentiment around the film has had somewhat of a turn in recent times, due to its campy tone.
Another Western attempt to adapt Street Fighter to screen also happened in 2009, with the crime action movie Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, starring Kristin Kreuk as the titular character. It received a largely negative critical reception.
Japanese-produced adaptations have had far more success. The first was a 1994 anime film, which was followed up by a handful of additional films based on the Street Fighter Alpha series, as well as several anime series.
It does appear the timing is right for this latest endeavour, as video game adaptations are finally beginning to see some success in the film market, with critical and commercial successes like Sonic The Hedgehog, The Witcher, The Last of Us, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, among several others.
Capcom has consistently been dabbling in the adaptation space throughout the modern era – specifically with its Resident Evil and Monster Hunter franchises – but its films have never quite been able to tell the incredible success stories that other games publishers are seeing.
Hopefully, for all of our sakes, the Legendary partnership will do Street Fighter justice.
Elsewhere, Street Fighter 6, the next mainline game in the series, is slated for release on 2 June 2023.
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