A new Street Fighter series is in production
Deadline brings news that Capcom’s legendary fighting game franchise is being developed for TV by production company Entertainment One. The prospect is exciting but the article describes it in only the vaguest of terms via a statement attributed to company president Mark Gordon:
“Street Fighter is a global tour de force franchise, having garnered immense worldwide commercial success and built a vast devoted fanbase that has only grown through its 30 year legacy. We are thrilled to be teaming up with Joey, Jacqueline and Mark, who are already so deeply connected to this brand, to bring this adored story to television audiences everywhere. A particular strength of Street Fighteris the wide range of ethnically diverse characters and powerful women featured in the game. It will allow us to build an inclusive and engaging TV universe.”
Joey Ansah, Jacqueline Quella, and Mark Wooding, the team behind the live-action web series Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, set to executive produce. Ansah previously wrote and directed the 12-episode live-action web series Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, which Wooding and Quella produced for Machinima. It generated 16 million viewers during its initial 2014 release and was hailed at the time as one of the best and most faithful adaptations of the gaming franchise to date.
Yoshinori Ono, Capcom Executive Producer for Street Fighter had the following to say about the project:
“After a long search, guided by the team behind Assassin’s Fist, we are delighted to be partnering with a company with the outstanding TV experience of Mark Gordon and eOne. They have the credentials to help us launch a faithful adaptation of Street Fighter as a major TV series,”
Street Fighter the series will draw on the game’s World Warrior story-arc — introduced in the 1991 Street Fighter II: The World Warrior sequel to the original game — as the jumping off point, centering on four protagonists: Ryu, Ken, Guile, and Chun-Li. Together, they fight to take down M. Bison, the evil mastermind who runs Shadaloo, a global criminal organization. Though on different journeys, our heroes’ paths will cross as they are drawn into the World Warrior Tournament, a competition devised by M. Bison to find the most powerful and capable fighter in the world. On the journey they come to share, they must draw on their strength, skills, intelligence, and loyalty in a battle to survive and emerge as the World Warrior.
Street Fighter has been around for more than 25 years and has already had multiple movies and web-series adaptations made from it. It’s always been a series focused more concerned with getting players to Hadouken! each other than storytelling, though, and has been all over the map in terms of tone. Of course, this project will have to have impeccable fight choreography, but it will be interesting to see if this Street Fighter show tries not to take itself too seriously.
While we wait, we do have Street Fighter V out in the wild, going into Season 3 of it’s DLC character roster; and coming in May 2018 is the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, which takes classic versions of the Arcade games and brings them to home consoles, some officially for the first time.
Source: Deadline
