The Last Two Live-Action Street Fighter Movies Scored 20 and 3 Percent. The First Reactions to the New One Are Mostly Positive. Here Is What to Expect.

The first social reactions to Street Fighter landed overnight after Monday's premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, and the tone caught a lot of people off guard. One podcaster called it "the biggest surprise of the year." Another called it "one of the greatest video game adaptations of all time." Not everyone was sold, but the mood ran clearly positive.

That matters because the bar is on the floor. Hollywood has made two live-action Street Fighter movies. The 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme film sits at 20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across 90 reviews. 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li sits at 3 percent. The third one opens Friday, October 16, rated PG-13, running about two hours, and filmed for IMAX. Here is what to expect.

The story: 1993, a tournament, and two friends who stopped talking

Kitao Sakurai's film is set in 1993, right in the middle of the Street Fighter II arcade craze. Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) trained together and fell out. Chun-Li (Callina Liang) recruits them both for the next World Warrior Tournament, where David Dastmalchian's M. Bison is waiting, and a conspiracy behind the tournament forces the two old friends to fight each other.

The boldest choice is in the flashbacks. Every look back at Ryu and Ken's training under their master, Gouken, is hand-drawn 2D animation by Titmouse, the studio behind The Legend of Vox Machina. Sakurai, who grew up in Japan, has pointed to '90s anime like Akira and Ghost in the Shell as the reference. Don Lee (Train to Busan) voices Gouken, and WWE star Roman Reigns plays Akuma, who first appears inside those animated sequences, stepping out of flames.

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Who plays who

• Andrew Koji (Warrior, Bullet Train) as Ryu
• Noah Centineo (To All the Boys I've Loved Before) as Ken Masters
• Callina Liang (Presence) as Chun-Li. She trained in taekwondo, muay Thai, and wushu, reportedly ate 12 eggs a day, and added 6.5 centimeters to her thighs for the part.
• David Dastmalchian as M. Bison
• Jason Momoa as Blanka, and he is one of the producers
• Cody Rhodes as Guile and Roman Reigns as Akuma, two WWE headliners
• 50 Cent as Balrog, country singer Orville Peck as Vega, and Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim

Eric André and Andrew Schulz turn up too, which makes sense once you know Sakurai's last feature was Bad Trip, the hidden-camera comedy he made with André. That tells you the register. This is an action comedy first, not a grim martial arts epic.

How it finally got made

This movie nearly did not happen. Legendary bought the live-action rights in 2023, with Capcom as a partner, and lined up Danny and Michael Philippou, the Talk to Me directors, who left in June 2024 to make Bring Her Back. Sony had the film dated for March 20, 2026, then pulled it off its calendar in March 2025 after its distribution deal with Legendary ended.

Sakurai signed on in early 2025, cameras rolled in Australia that August under the working title Punch, and Paramount took over distribution in September. It is also the first big test of the newly combined Paramount and Warner Bros. slate, after the merger closed on October 6.

What the first reactions say

The premiere crowd's praise clustered around Centineo's Ken, Liang's Chun-Li, the fights, and the 2D animation. A sample:

• "The biggest surprise of the year." (Daniel Baptista, The Movie Podcast)
• "A silly, fun, and fearless good time." (Brandon Davis)
• It "often feels like a better successor to Mortal Kombat (1995)." (Andrew J. Salazar)
• It has good elements but "ultimately falls flat." (Tessa Smith, Mama's Geeky)

The complaints were consistent too: jokes that do not always land, an abrupt ending, and a crowded roster where some famous fighters fade into the background. One viewer wrote that its bold choices "hurt the film more than they help it."

When the real reviews land

As of Tuesday, Paramount had not announced a review embargo. Reports this week say general press screenings were not scheduled until Wednesday afternoon, which would put full reviews on Thursday, the day before opening. That same night, Paramount runs its "Bonus Round" fan screenings at 7 p.m. in IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and other premium formats.

The box office math

Tracking has slipped. Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast called for a $30 million to $40 million opening, but presale-based estimates have since drifted into the $20 millions. Paramount has not announced a budget.

The obvious comparison is Mortal Kombat II, which opened to $38.5 million in May and stalled at about $129.5 million worldwide. History offers a stranger benchmark. For all its reviews, the 1994 film opened to $9.5 million and made $99.4 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. The Legend of Chun-Li opened to $4.7 million and finished with $12.7 million worldwide against a $50 million budget. Even the low end of current tracking would double the 1994 opening, though adjusted for inflation, that 1994 number is worth about $20 million today.

It also has company. Whalefall, Brian Duffield's thriller about a diver swallowed by a sperm whale, opens the same day, along with Sense and Sensibility, and Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother goes nationwide. Our October in theaters guide has the full slate.

Should you go this weekend?

If you grew up feeding quarters into the arcade cabinet, the premiere buzz is reason enough to buy a Friday ticket, ideally in IMAX. If you want a critic's word first, wait for Thursday. Either way, clearing 20 percent is not the interesting question. The interesting one is how close it gets to Resident Evil, which became the best-reviewed video game movie ever last month and sits at 96 percent today. Our best-reviewed video game movies ranking has the full board.

Once you have seen it, put it head to head with the 1994 version on Shortlist and find out where it really lands. Our movie tier list guide shows how to build the whole video game shelf, and the list maker gets you started in a minute.

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