The enduringly-popular video game series Street Fighter is headed for a big screen resurrection, according to reports.
Having been around since the early 1990s, the Street Fighter series has always seemed ripe for film adaptation. With colourful characters, globe-trotting storylines and bone-crunching action, the adventures of Ryu, Ken Masters and the other titular street fighters seems tailor-made for a film adaptation. Or at least another film adaptation given that most consider 1994’s Street Fighter film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, Ming Na Wen and Kylie Minogue to have fallen some way short of capturing the franchise’s potential.
Whilst that film has become a campy cult favourite in the decades since its release, another spin-off movie featuring Chun-Li is less loved. However, in the years since their release, anime versions of Street Fighter have offered tantalising glimpses of what a cool project a Street Fighter movie could be. Well, praise be to Sheng Long because it looks like that will be happening, courtesy of Legendary Pictures.
The recent spate of successful video game adaptations, from Uncharted to Sonic The Hedgehog seems to have every executive in Hollywood desperately scrabbling around to see which video game rights are available. Legendary has pounced on Street Fighter with reports suggesting that we’ll not only be getting a movie (or more likely a series of them) but also a TV show.
Whilst we’re not always a fan of the ‘shared universe’ approach, the world of Street Fighter is built upon dozens of characters so an accompanying TV show could make sense here, allowing the story to flourish with some long-form storytelling that could explore a greater number of characters, whilst the film could focus on core favourites.
Little else is known about the project at the moment, but with HBO's The Last Of Us continuing to be one of 2022’s most critically-acclaimed TV shows and Universal’s The Super Mario Bros opening imminently, video game adaptations are in vogue right now, so don’t be surprised to hear in the coming months that a few more classic computer games have been plucked from the shelf, dusted off and primed for the big screen.
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