Legendary and Capcom's planned Street Fighter reboot recently hit a major setback when Danny and Michael Philippou - who helmed Aussie horror hit Talk To Me - stepped away from the project, but a new director may have been found.
According to insider Daniel Richtman, Kitao Sakurai (Bad Trip) has now signed on to helm the film.
Reports indicate that "scheduling is partly to blame" for the Philippou brothers' decision, as the studio was hoping to begin shooting the movie fairly soon, and the filmmakers had shifted their focus to what will now be their next project, Bring Her Back, which is currently shooting in Australia.
It's a shame that the Philippou brothers will no longer take the helm, as they sounded very enthusiastic about the film during a recent interview.
"I think it's awesome that we have such a connection with the game and to the characters, and there's not like a pre-established big film franchise where we have to fall in line [with] an overall plot," said Danny. "I think that we'd have the freedom to create what that overall arc could be if it was gonna be a bunch of films. And also, we'd love the chance to do an action film. We'd love the chance to do big set pieces of a big budget because even on our YouTube stuff, we're designing stunt rigs that had never been done before, and to do that on a grand scale, man, I feel like we could create something no one's ever seen before."
Michael added, "And I think it's like, diving into the lore of Street Fighter, all the characters, where they come from has been so exciting. You just get endless ideas, so putting them to the screen, yeah, I think we can make something special."
Some early logo artwork for the movie was recently unveiled, which you can check out at the link below.
The Street Fighter video game series remains one of the most popular fighting games franchises of all time, but hasn't fared very well with live-action adaptation up until now. The 1994 movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue has amassed a cult following over the years, but is still widely regarded as a misfire, and the less said about 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li the better!
We know next to nothing about this latest take on the property, so it's impossible to say whether it will break the trend. The majority of fans would seem to prefer a Ryu-focused story, but there is a lot of Street Fighter lore to mine from at this stage.