Legendary Buys Street Fighter Movie Rights

Movies

Moviegoers better practice their hadoukens. Legendary has secured the film and TV rights to Street Fighter, the popular fighting game franchise that has been a gaming fixture since 1987. According to Deadline, plans are already underway for a movie. The video game series, which was created and is still owned by Capcom, really took off with Street Fighter II in 1991, which had several different editions across various gaming consoles. (My personal favorite was Super Street Fighter II because it had the most characters.) Sequels and spinoffs have abounded since then. Street Fighter has made a few forays into film over the years, the best-received of which was called Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Two live-action films have been produced. The first was Street Fighter in 1994, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia (in his final role), and Ming-Na Wen, which was fairly successful but isn’t remembered fondly. The second was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li in 2009, starring Kristen Kreuk, Chris Klein, and Neal McDonough, which was a major flop. Any movies or TV series Legendary produces will be made in partnership with Capcom.

I wonder if the next Street Fighter movie will be about a tournament like the games are. Neither of the live-action films concerned a tournament; they were just action movies with the Street Fighter characters and pieces of the lore. Mortal Kombat, on the other hand, has stuck to the framework of a tournament, albeit loosely with the last (awful) adaptation. The 1995 Mortal Kombat was a bigger hit than 1994’s Street Fighter, perhaps in part because it didn’t stray as far from the video game. Come to think of it, I don’t think Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie was about a tournament, either. Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt it this time. I don’t doubt the lofty box office predictions for The Super Mario Bros. Movie spurred on this acquisition; given its likely success, the popularity of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, and Chris Pratt’s recent talk of a Nintendo Cinematic Universe, I wonder if Hollywood is preparing to replace the ubiquity of superhero movies with video game movies. If so, Street Fighter won’t be alone, and a bunch of classic game titles will be snapped up by major studios. Personally, I’m holding out for Paperboy: The Movie, starring one of the Stranger Things kids.