Legendary has acquired the film and TV rights to the “Street Fighter” video game franchise and will work with the game’s distributor Capcom on future projects.
The long enduring fighting video game, which gets a new installment with “Street Fighter VI” in June, began life with the 1987 arcade game.
However it was 1991’s “Street Fighter II” where it became a pop culture icon and mainstay, that game spawning plenty of special editions and remasters. In all, the franchise has sold 49 million units worldwide.
The property was famously adapted for the big screen in 1994 with a film widely panned at release but growing into something of a strange cult hit in later years.
That film starred the late Raul Julia in a memorable final performance as bad guy M. Bison, along with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ming-Na Wen, Kylie Minogue and more.
Kristin Kreuk led a bigger commercial and critical bomb with “Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li” in 2009. One key difference now though is that video game to screen adaptations have started to find success of late with Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” films, Sony’s “Uncharted” and HBO’s “The Last of Us”. Universal has “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opening Friday.
Source: THR
