During this week’s CinemaCon trade show, Paramount Pictures dropped a full-length trailer for its upcoming live-action adaptation of the Street Fighter fighting game franchise.
The new trailer for Street Fighter highlights iconic characters from the games with their original designs mostly intact, including Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy, and Akuma. To the latter point, there’s a scene of Ken beating up a car like in the bonus stages from Street Fighter II and footage of Ryu powering up one of his famous Hadoken fireballs. There’s even a cheeky reference to Chun-Li’s notoriously-large and powerful thighs. This is all helped along by the fact that the actors all look very silly and mostly accurate to the games. The plot looks to be fairly standard for this type of adaptation, as there’s a big, important fighting tournament and Chun-Li is recruiting people from around the globe, acting like the franchise’s Nick Fury or something. Ken and Ryu are beefing, M. Bison is involved in a criminal conspiracy and everyone else is punching or making snarky comments.
Street Fighter is directed by Kitao Sakurai, who made the film Bad Trip and was heavily involved with The Eric Andre Show. It hits theaters on October 16. The cast is actually stacked. Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji lead the film as Ken and Ryu, but Jason Momoa is playing Blanka and Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson is portraying Balrog. Other actors involved include David Dastmalchian, Callina Liang, Cody Rhodes and Orville Peck.
The Street Fighter games have been a cultural force since 1987, selling over 55 million units worldwide and becoming one of the highest-grossing video game franchises ever made. The story centers on a global fighting tournament organized by M. Bison and his evil organization Shadaloo, with diverse martial artists from around the world competing in intense one-on-one battles. This film adaptation captures the tournament energy with a massive ensemble cast clearly having a blast, bringing these iconic characters to life. 50 Cent has been expanding his entertainment empire beyond music for years now, and his involvement in major film projects shows he’s serious about building a legacy in Hollywood. The Street Fighter movie represents a different kind of challenge for him, as he steps into a character from one of gaming’s most beloved franchises. With a cast this stacked and a director who clearly understands the source material, this could be the video game adaptation that actually works.
The film is being shot for IMAX and represents a major investment from Paramount and Legendary in bringing this gaming universe to the big screen.
