HOLLYWOOD — Hollywood loves salable series, and as vital as Harry Potter, Shrek and Transformers might be to the bottom line, the studios are increasingly embracing an even more established and often better-selling franchise: the video game.
“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” which opened Friday, is not apt to break any box-office records, largely because the film premiered in limited national release at about 1,500 screens. Yet the martial arts “Street Fighter” film does represent part of an aggressive return to video- game adaptations, a genre that has gyrated in and out of popularity and suddenly is attracting several show business superstars.
Gore Verbinski, the director of the blockbuster “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, is developing an ambitious adaptation of the first-person- shooter game “Bioshock,” while “Pirates” producer Jerry Bruckheimer and filmmaker Mike Newell (“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) are deep into production on 2010’s action-adventure release “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.”
Like so much in the movie business, executives and filmmakers are drawn to the form, thanks in part to its built-in awareness, a critical advantage with so many movies competing for a shrinking moviegoing audience. It’s often difficult to get the studios to even let you in the gate if you don’t have an obvious marketing hook.
“Right now, you have to have an element that brands your pitch,” says Kevin Misher, a former Universal Studios production chief who, in addition to producing director Michael Mann’s July 1 mob drama “Public Enemies,” is about to start pitching a planned movie version of a video game that he doesn’t want to identify publicly.
“It’s either a filmmaker, a piece of talent, a graphic novel or a video game — something tangible into which a studio can put its limited development dollars.” Ashok Amritraj, whose Hyde Park Films co-financed “Street Fighter” with its video game maker, Japan’s Capcom Co., notes that “Street Fighter” is a “billion-dollar game franchise” that just celebrated its 20th anniversary with the release of a fourth edition of the game.
The game, launched in an arcade version in 1987, was previously made into 1994’s Jean-Claude Van Damme movie “Street Fighter,” which despite middling reviews grossed nearly $100 million worldwide.
“It certainly helps with the awareness for the film,” says Amritraj, whose 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son urged him to make the “Street Fighter” movie — which stars Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein and Neal McDonough — because they enjoy the underlying game so much. “And there’s this underground world — all these Internet sites where kids go to talk about the game — that are just huge,” Amritraj says.
