From The Last of Us to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Hollywood has found the cheat code to halfway decent game adaptations. Now, the next contender to enter theaters is the grandmaster of fighting games, Street Fighter.
Two days after The Hollywood Reporter said the film and television rights to Capcom’s 35-year-old franchise had gone to Legendary, the brand’s social media announced that a new movie is in development.
“A new live-action Street Fighter movie is in the works!” the brand confirmed on its Twitter and Instagram pages. “Co-produced by Legendary Entertainment and Capcom. More news to come in the future!” No other details were announced, so the director, writer, cast, and release date are all still unknown.
This won’t be the first time Street Fighter, which centers on international martial artists in a tournament sponsored by the evil Shadaloo syndicate, has been made into a movie. Besides anime films, Street Fighter: The Movie opened in 1994, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raúl Julia, Ming-Na Wen, and Kylie Minogue. It received poor reviews, but has endured among fans despite its goofy tone and deviations from the game’s story. In 2009 an unrelated spin-off, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li starring Kristin Kreuk, bombed with critics and the box office.
As superheroes lose their powers in theaters — as evidenced by the underwhelming performance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Shazam! Fury of the Gods — games have become a new source of fresh, appealing IP with built-in fanbases. While video game movies are hardly new (Legendary produced Pokémon: Detective Pikachu in 2019), recent efforts have changed the narrative that they’re doomed enterprises. In 2020, Sonic the Hedgehog was surprisingly effective, while this year’s The Last of Us was a touching critical success.
There have still been far more duds than hits when it comes to video game adaptations, including two terrible Resident Evil reboots in the last two years alone. But at a time when The Last of Us was as buzzy as Game of Thrones, and theaters are now playing both a decent Super Mario movie and a great Dungeons & Dragons movie, there’s at least a fighting chance for Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and the rest of the select screen.
