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STREET FIGHTER: WORLD WARRIOR Is Back In Development For A Series Adaptation

The last eight years have been some of the most electric for fans of Capcom’s Street Fighter game franchise. Actor and martial artist Joey Ansah’s hit webseries, Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist and its included feature film edit were an epic delight that showed the world that adapting a fighting game into live-action was possible.

Sadly, any news of a follow-up season with the announced Street Fighter: World Warrior program would land in limbo with Machinima holding all the cards at the time leading up to the go90 rollout of Street Fighter: Resurrection. It was an interesting segue but it left a lot of fans outside North America feeling excluded as go90 didn’t brought cast the show anywhere else.

I can’t speak fully on what happened thereafter save for my own hopes that Ansah’s vision would fully come to pass as quiet as things have been. Thankfully, and to the delightful shock of many, trade news sources are now running with word followed-up at Deadline that Entertainment One/Mark Gordon have closed a deal to officially produce the Street Fighter: World Warrior series fans have been waiting for for what feels like ages.

Ansah, who stars in Assassin’s Fist which he also helmed as well as go90 miniseries Street Fighter: Resurrection, is rejoining once more with Jacqueline Quella and Mark Wooding, to executive produce the series that will follow the four protagonists: Ryu, Ken, Guile and Chun-Li, as their individual journeys see them converge and work together to fight through the World Warrior tournament run by evil Shadowloo figure head and hulking force to be reckoned with, M. Bison.

“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,” said Mark Gordon, eOne’s President and Chief Content Officer, Film, Television and Digital. “A particular strength of Street Fighter is 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.” 

“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,” said Yoshinori Ono, Capcom Executive Producer for Street Fighter.

Anash has long lauded the series as a signature project hailing the possibility of bringing video games to life in cinematic form. He proved so with positive responses gained from a three-minute proof of concept he did with Owen Trevor, and martial arts stars, actors Jon Foo and Christian Howard, the latter who would not only go onto recur in the series as Ken next to actor Mike Moh as Ryu, but help create and foundate the very universe envisioned with Ansah for fans.

In casting, not much is known about what is happening with the role of Chun-Li as Ansah is known to be very careful and observant in choosing. As for his choice for the role of Guile, however, I’m almost certain Boyka fanatics are holding Ansah to account after stating the following to readers of Shogun Gamer in 2013:

“…I’ll tell fans now, if we succeed with Assassin’s Fist and move on to the World Warrior I can say now that I want Scott to be my Guile. Look at how Scott looks in Undisputed 2 and imagine that but with blonde hair and an American accent. He would make a killer Guile.”

Fans who were able to catch Resurrection also got a surprise glimpse of the notorious M. Bison which might hint further just who Ansah has in mind to wear the signature red military garb and cape once more.

Ansah, also best known for stunt and acting credits in The Bourne Ultimatum, Green Street Hooligans: Underground and series Beowulf, can be seen battling opposite Tom Cruise in Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout this summer. eOne is handling international sales on Street Fighter: World Warrior.

Stay tuned!

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Confusion And Frustration Stir As Machinima Botches STREET FIGHTER: RESURRECTION Release On Amazon Prime

Actor and filmmaker Joey Ansah is front and center this week in the wake of Machinima’s mismanged Amazon Prime release of the four-part live-action minseries, Street Fighter: Resurrection. On Tuesday, Ansah took to his fanpage on Facebook to share a fantastic alternative promotional one-sheet for the series, in addition to announcing the news pertaining to the series’s accidental upload and subsequent removal from Amazon Prime branches in the U.K., German and Japan in the wake of its North American availability this week.

“Despite SFR also appearing available to view on UK, JP & DE Amazon Prime yesterday, this was in fact an upload error by Machinima/Amazon and the series has been taken down in those locations.” says Ansah. “SFR will not be available on Amazon in any country other than U.S.A.  How such an upload error is even possible on such a huge platform is beyond us. We are launching an investigation into how such a foul up happened.”

Following the five-year long, evolutionary success of Ansah’s 2014 webseries/feature film release, Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, Machinima insisted its own interest in collaborating with Ansah on a project in lieu of Capcom’s game release, “Street Fighter V”. Together with a solidified deal to present the film on Verizon’s go90 mobile application, Machinima fully financed and thereby debuted Street Fighter: Resurrection, with arbitrary control over its global distribution. As such, the series was made available solely to U.S. consumers, much to the chagrin of the worldwide fanbase Ansah accrued. Machinima and AMC Internatarional Partners Iberia also announced a package deal to release the series on a diverse gaming network for audiences in Spain and Portugal.

“Unlike SFAF, Machinima fully financed SFR and as a result control all international distribution.” Ansah adds. “We were initially led to believe during production of SFR that the series would be as easily viewable internationally by our fans as SFAF was. This turned out not to be the case, despite continued protests by us.”

Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist stars, actors Mike Moh and Christian Howard reprise their roles for the show which introduces actor and martial artist Alain Moussi (Kickboxer: Vengeance, Kickboxer: Retaliation), leading the story of two warriors of Hadou, and a fledgeling martial arts heiress who find themselves swept into an reanimated supersoldier’s mission to thwart the sale of a deadly weapon being engineered and sold by a criminal mastermind thought to be long dead. Martial arts and stunt exponents, actresses Natasha Hopkins and Katrina Durden (Marvel’s Doctor Strange) also star with appearances by Amy Johnston (Lady Bloodfight) and multi-decorated martial artist and instructor, actor Silvio Simac (Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, Transporter 3).

“The SFAF and SFR creative team are fully aware of how frustrating, strange, restrictive and disenfranchising the release of SFR has been to the people who matter: YOU, our fans.” continued Ansah in an emphatic apology to fans. “Believe us when we say we are deeply sorry and share your frustration and have long since gone collectively bald from tearing our hair out.  We have learnt from this unfortunate situation and assure you any future SF live action productions from us will NOT be in partnership with companies that cannot guarantee a transparent, easy to access distribution. Thanks for your understanding and continued support and please keep faith in us.”

Updates currently remain pending on the progress behind Street Fighter: World Warrior which tentatively has Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist producer Jacqueline Quella and co-producer Mark Wooding attached as of the announcement in 2014. Stay tuned for more updates as things develop.

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Joey Ansah Updates Fans On STREET FIGHTER: WORLD WARRIOR

Dear SFAF fans. Street Fighter: Resurrection is a highly ambitious, action packed, live-action mini series which serves as a narrative prologue to the events of SFV. With the new game coming out and interest from both Machinima and Capcom for me to make a tie in, I couldn’t pass up such an exciting prospect to leap forward a decade after the events of Assassin’s Fist and write and direct a very contemporary part of the SF mythos. Featuring old faithful characters and brand new ones. The same level of detail and authenticity has gone into SFR as it has SFAF. I want to also address the subject of STREET FIGHTER: WORLD WARRIOR. Your passion and demand for seeing the direct narrative follow up to SFAF is understandable and heart warming. I spent most of this year completing detailed story development and structure for World Warrior. To pull together a production of that huge scale takes time. So rest assured SFWW is still coming! and to fill the gap until it is ready, you have SFR to look forward to. Trust me it will Shun Goku Satsu your senses. ~ Joey Ansah

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SDCC 2014: Capcom Announces STREET FIGHTER: WORLD WARRIOR

For starters, to simply address the overwhelming support drawn for creative duo, actors Joey Ansah and Christian Howard‘s new online webseries release of Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist would be nothing short of an understatement. The phenomenon has captured the hearts of any growing number of thousands of fans this year and in the years since the journey began to reclaim the rightful cinematic vision for Capcom’s highly popular video game franchise, and it’s finally heading to television, DVD, Blu-Ray and VoD platforms soon. And as much support as there has been for the series, it was only a matter of time before sequel-hungry fans got the update they were waiting for.

That update finally came on Friday night as Ansah attended San Diego Comic-Con to promote the current series in accordance with publicity for the forthcoming production booklet. Fans have also been generating further publicity for the series’ official Facebook platform offering questions for the page’s weekly episodic Q and A forum for fans as the summer progresses, while Ansah and select cast and crew, namely series actors Mike Moh and Gaku Space join him on the road.

Needless to say, many of the any questions pertained to when Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist would move its initial story forward with a second season. On Friday night, Capcom gave fans the annoncement they needed, with reports from Variety confirming season two development. Set to release sometime in late 2015 or early 2016, Street Fighter: World Warrior will re-introduce Moh and Howard respectively as Ryu and Ken, the iconic purveyors of Ansatsuken – the style passed on to them in the previous season by master Goken, played by actor Akira Koieyama.

Following the events of Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, Ansah is returning to write and direct the new season which will expand the story which Ansah explained during a panel at SDCC on Friday. “The scale of ‘World Warrior’ is much larger, picking up where ‘Assassin’s Fist’ left off as we follow Ryu and Ken on their ‘Musha Shugyo’ (warrior’s pilgrimage),” said Ansah, who also starred as Akuma in the first season. “The Shadaloo criminal cartel will be introduced, led by the extremely dangerous M.Bison, which will naturally lead into the World Warrior tournament,”.

Accordingly, the new series will expand to the stories will  characters from the classic game franchise, namely prominent Muay Thai fighter, Sagat, U.S. Air Force Major Guile, and expert martial artist and vengeful interpol agent Chun-Li. Further developments are needed on how the new season will achieve its goal, but producer Jacqueline Quella and co-producer Mark Wooding offered a few statements of their own at the SDCC panel. “We demonstrated with ‘Assassin’s Fist’ that an authentic, live-action version of videogames, with a compelling and dramatic storyline, can be made,” said Quella. “We’ll be taking the same approach with the new series.”. Wooding added “There are some big and primal themes which we’ll be exploring in the sequel, …It will be thrilling and naturally, as befits the game, the fights will be epic, but it will be driven by the characters, their stories, faults and problems. It will be a dark tale.”.

The first season took relatively around three years to take off after Ansah and fellow filmmaker Owen Trevor broke ground with the 2010 release of the conceptual shortfilm hit, Street Fighter Legacy. The project took a big step forward with further Comic-Con announcements in 2012 through a crowdsourcing effort in early 2013 before earning the blessing of outside investors, essentially setting the first season in stone.

Sixteen months, a full first season with over sixteen million YouTube views on Machinima and over five-hundred thousand Facebook fans later, the franchise that became a household name for generations of gaming culture is well on its way to coming full circle. More notably, if earlier hype proves positive, martial arts action fans could very well see the reunion of Ansah and Howard with action star and Green Street 3 lead actor, Scott Adkins as a potential casting choice for Guile. And considering the formula by which the casting, design and creative process has been executed, Adkins’ possible addition to the series would be a remarkable sign of the extra serious talent fans will see when the team behind Street Fighter: World Warrior commenses filming. And Capcom’s blessing only enhances the awesome here much further.

“We are delighted to be working again with the team that did such an excellent job with ‘Street Fighter: Assassins Fist,” said Matt Dahlgren, associate director of brand marketing at Capcom. “The response to it has been amazing, and working with filmmakers who are so passionate about the game is an extremely rewarding process.”

The big question now is will the production be able to confirm Adkins, granted he will be available between his other film and martial arts instructional obligations? Or will another worthy actor be summoned to channel the Major’s sonic boom? Also, which actors and actress do you believe will best suit the appearances of Chun-Li, Sagat and the arbiter of the Psycho Crusher himself, M. Bison?

Decisions, decisions!

City On Fire reports that Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist arrives on North American DVD and Blu-Ray from FUNimation on October 24, 2014.

Stay tuned for more info!

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