Well I didn’t expect this news today. It appears another Street Fighter movie is in the works, we get wind of this story from variety via the moviehole:
According to Variety, Kreuk, who plays Lana Lang on the Superboy series, will star as martial artist Chun-Li. Duncan will play Balrog, while Klein is stepping into the role of Nash. Yune is taking on the mystical Gen. Rounding out the cast are Moon Bloodgood (of the now-defunct TV series “Journeyman”), Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas, Singapore’s Edmund Chen and Hong Kong film star Cheng Pei Pei. Apparently the producers are still looking for an actor to fill the villain Bison’s shoes. That role, you’ll recall, was played by the late Raul Julia in the previous “Street Fighter” movie.
Andrzej Bartkowiak (“Romeo Must Die,” “Exit Wounds”) is directing from a script penned by “Voltron” scribe Justin Marks. Hong Kong fight choreographer Dion Lam (“The Matrix”) is handling the extreme fight sequences. It all kicks off in March.
I am certainly not excited about his film; because the last attempt was insanely horrible. Michael Clark Duncan is an awesome Balrog, and the inclusion of Gen is certainly welcomed by me. Gen is a cool character that has been around since the original street fighter and his Kung-Fu stylings are not to be underestimated.
I welcome Dion Lam as the fight choreographer and certainly hope this movie gets to showcase his work. If this film just sticks to a tournament style film, it will be the best it can be. We want to see the characters we are familiar with kicking the hell out of each other in a way we are accustomed to. I want to see E.Honda bear-hug someone and I want to see Zangief pile drive someone into the ground.
Street Fighter needs to be treated with reverence. It is an international language and an ambassador of game-play around the globe. When I was 17 I found myself in a Hong Kong arcade, saw someone playing Street Fighter 2, signaled to him with a head nod, a lift of the eyebrows and then a point at the quarter slot. The man nodded and we were off to the races. He didn’t speak English, I didn’t speak Cantonese and the game remained the same.
