Legendary Pictures has shared the official poster for the Street Fighter movie.
As shared by Collider, the poster simply has the Street Fighter logo graffiti’d on an unpainted brick wall. This design very simply harkens to the 1987 original game.
Street Fighter is the preeminent video game franchise in the fighting game genre. Street Fighter II in 1991 in particular created the mold that defined the 2D fighting game, and popularized the fighting game, making it the industry’s biggest genre for that decade.
Fighting games gave way to today’s most popular genres, such as open world games and live service games, but Street Fighter remains a very popular franchise, and one with a lot of potential as a crossover IP.
The 1994 Street Fighter film was produced by Columbia Pictures, and starred Jean Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue. Unfortunately for Capcom, this project was a creative misfire, known for having the same behind the scenes turmoil other video game movies had at that time. But really, this one particularly stung for Capcom, because they shouldered most of its $ 4 million project and actually had creative control.
The 2009 film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li should have turned out better. This project was co-developed by Capcom and Hyde Park Entertainment, whose filmography included hits like Walking Tall and Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. Its director, Justin Marks, would go on to produce the recent FX series hit, Shogun. And the cast included talent like Neal McDonough, Robin Shou, and a still fresh Kristin Kreuk.
Somehow, this project also ended up floundering, with critics and fans pointing to the script and poor fight scenes. As many fans pointed out, the 1994 film was cheesy, but it was far more entertaining. While it wasn’t the only fighting game movie that turned out badly in the 2000s, this failure put Capcom’s crossover ambitions on ice again.
Is third time going to be the charm? In April last year, Capcom announced that Legendary Pictures acquired the contract to make a new Street Fighter movie. Legendary then revealed that Danny and Michael Philippou had been hired to direct this new film.
Legendary Pictures is rightly lauded for successfully producing the Monsterverse franchise, possibly the only remaining film IP franchise that’s still well regarded and consistently successful. But we shouldn’t forget that Legendary’s success dates from the mid-2000s, and includes the 300 movies, the Nolan Batman movies, etc.
Legendary already have a few video game projects under their belt, with the most successful being Pokemon Detective Pikachu. We don’t know quite yet how well the Philippous will do with this project, but Legendary has found a knack for making bold choices work. So this does look like it’s something worth looking forward to.
