![]() ![]() ![]() De Souza had managed to convince Capcom to let him focus on just seven or eight characters from the Street Fighter roster, rather than all 19. Jean-Claude Van Damme was the biggest action movie star in the world when he made Street Fighter: The Movie. But like Van Damme, he wasn’t coming cheap. He accepted, thanks in part to his kids, who were huge fans of the game. To add some gravitas on the baddie side, the hugely respected character actor Raul Julia was approached to play Bison. Capcom decided it needed a big star for Guile and the producers went for Jean-Claude Van Damme – who, after the success of Timecop, was the biggest action movie actor in the world, with a price tag to match. De Souza’s plan was to funnel a portion of the budget into training the actors in martial arts before filming began, calling in the famed fight choreographer, Benny “The Jet” Urquidez to help out.īut then things started to go awry. ![]() There was a modest $30m budget, with a 10-week shoot – six weeks on location in Thailand, followed by four in Australia at the new Warner Bros studio on the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, the producers set up the logistics. Guile would be the special forces hero, teaming up with street fighters Ken and Ryu to foil the dastardly plan. Steven De Souza, writer and directorĭe Souza started working on his script, imagining Bison as the corrupt dictator of a fictional south-east Asian state, looking to take over the world with an army of genetically modified super soldiers. I could see they were energised during our meeting, and within a week they said: ‘You guys are doing it.’” Seven characters has always been the magic number through history: seven sins, seven wonders, hell, Seven Samurai. “When they came to the meeting they brought some artwork to help me, and one image had Bison as the most wanted criminal in the world, in a James Bond-style underground lair. “Unbeknownst to me, Capcom was thinking in this direction,” he says. “I said: ‘Yeah, I’m very familiar with it – my son had just put his first year of college into that machine.’ I said I’d come up with a treatment, but I wanted to direct.”ĭe Souza wasn’t interested in making a tournament movie – he wanted something more like a James Bond adventure, with a proper plot and exotic locations. “Ed and another producer came to me and said: ‘Capcom is going around – can you come up with a take for a movie? They’ll be here the day after tomorrow,’” recalls De Souza of the pitch. The series has made around $10bn in revenue for publisher Capcom. Released in arcades in 1991, Street Fighter II was a smash hit when it was ported to SNES the following year. ![]()
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