New Director Revives ‘Street Fighter’ Movie: What to Expect Next!

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After several years of development, the movie version of the iconic video game Street Fighter has secured a new director: Kitao Sakurai (known for The Eric Andre Show and The Passage). According to Deadline, Capcom and Legendary are producing this film together. Following the departure of the Philippou Brothers as directors in June 2024, despite Sony setting a release date of Mar. 20, 2026, news about the film had been scarce. Now that Sakurai is onboard, it’s time for Street Fighter to start gathering its cast, with the movie set to premiere in approximately 13 months.

In April 2023, it was revealed that the movie rights for the popular video game series, Street Fighter, had been obtained by Legendary Productions. Subsequently, twin Australian filmmakers, Danny and Michael Philippou, were in negotiations to direct the project, an exciting development indeed. Notably, these directors had previously made a comical sketch video titled “Real Life Street Fighter,” serving as promotion for the web series “Street Fighter: Resurrection” on Machinima. However, after just a year, the Philippou brothers departed due to scheduling issues with their upcoming film “Bring Her Back.” This seemed to cause some disagreement between Legendary Productions and Capcom as they appeared unwilling to delay the project further.

Back in 1987, I was part of something truly groundbreaking – the launch of the Street Fighter video game series. But it wasn’t until the sequel in 1991 that things really started to sizzle! This incredible update gave players a thrill as they could select diverse characters, and boy, did it take off! In fact, it paved the way for gaming classics like Mortal Kombat. Now, fast forward to 2023, and I’m still riding that wave with Street Fighter 6 – perfectly timed alongside Legendary’s announcement of the new movie. What a journey it has been!

There Have Been Other Film Adaptations of ‘Street Fighter’

Over the past few years, only two web series like “Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist” (2014) and “Resurrections” (2016) have been produced, but the number of film adaptations based on video games can be counted on one hand. In 1994, the first film adaptation was penned and directed by Steven E. de Souza, who also wrote the Die Hard series. This movie featured Jean-Claude Van Damme as Colonel Guile, Raul Julia as Bison, Kylie Minogue as Cammy, and Ming-Na Wen as Chun-Li. It premiered around Christmas time and earned $99 million against a production budget of $35 million; while not a failure, it didn’t perform well enough to warrant a sequel. On Rotten Tomatoes, it received poor ratings from both critics (11%) and audiences (20%).

2009 saw the release of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, a movie that left audiences and critics underwhelmed. Starring Kristin Kreuk as Chun-Li, Neal McDonough as Bison, and Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, this film failed to make an impact at the box office and received poor reviews. The film only managed to earn $12.7 million worldwide, and currently has a 3% rating from critics and 12% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Comparatively speaking, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li might be as poorly received or even worse than the 1994 films Double Dragon and the first Super Mario Bros., which also had lackluster performances.

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2025-02-20 01:05