A film based on the iconic fighting game series is currently in development.
The day Legendary Entertainment revealed a new live-action installment of the “Street Fighter” franchise was the most significant day of fans’ lives. Nevertheless, for Legendary, it was Tuesday—or actually, Monday.
Legendary has reached an agreement with Capcom, the creator of the classic fighting game series that inspired “Street Fighter,” to obtain the exclusive rights to live-action movies and television shows based on the property. A full-length movie based on the games is currently in its infancy. It will be co-developed and produced by Legendary in collaboration with Capcom, same like all the preceding projects.
The announcement comes three months before “Street Fighter 6,” the most recent installment in the series, which will launch on June 2 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. “Street Fighter V” was the most recent entry, and it was updated twice, in 2018 and 2020.
“Street Fighter,” like most fighting games, often features a very basic plot. A diverse ensemble of martial artists compete in a world war tournament that is run by the global crime organization Shadaloo in most of the episodes. Over the years, the number of playable characters in the franchise has increased to over 100, but Ryu, a Japanese martial artist who wields a hadoukan, is the franchise’s de facto leader. Other recurring characters in the series include Ryu’s best buddy Ken, his arch-enemy Akuma, British super soldier Cami, US Air Force Major Guile, an odd green-skinned beast named Blanka, and the main bad guy Shadaloo. Captain M. Bison.
The first “Street Fighter” video game, which was created by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto, was published in 1987 to lukewarm reviews. But the 1991 sequel “Street Fighter II: The Global Warrior,” which earned an estimated $10.56 billion through arcade play and sold over 15 million copies for home systems, firmly solidified the franchise’s notoriety. Many of the ideas and features that came to characterize the fighting game genre were pioneered by the game and its sequels, and the franchise as a whole has sold more than 49 million units globally across all of its iterations and spinoffs.
Due to the games’ popularity, there have already been two live-action movies. The first, “Street Fighter,” from 1994, had mixed reviews but was economically successful and gained fans over time, particularly for Raul Julia’s gloriously hammy performance as M. Bison. . The second, “The Legend of Chun-Li,” released in 2009, earned only unfavorable reviews and failed miserably at the box office. On the basis of the franchise, three anime movies and two animated series have also been released.
Warcraft (2016) and Detective Pikachu (2019) are two theatrical movies that Legendary has previously made that are based on popular video game series. Both have earned nearly $430 million each, making them the highest-grossing video game movies of all time, albeit “Warcraft” hasn’t quite succeeded at the box office.
With co-creator of “Portlandia” Jonathan Krisel directing, a “Detective Pikachu” sequel based on the eternally famous “Pokemon” franchise is now in development at Legendary. A film adaptation of the infamous first-person shooter series “Duke Nukem” was reportedly in production last year at the studio from the “Cobra Kai” team.