Can Jason Momoa and a WWE Superstar Make a Good ‘Street Fighter’ Movie?

Street Fighter should be easier to adapt. To be fair, there is a series of cartoons and animated movies that fans of the property enjoy, but any attempt to get a more mainstream adaptation off the ground has gone poorly, to say the least. It’s just two people, from international locals, squaring off in a fist fight that also can include super powers(?). There should be an easy way to make a movie out of that, even without following the lore established in the games.

The first attempt happened in 1994 and was written and directed by the guy who wrote Die Hard! It featured Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guyle, the… totally American soldier who is battling Bison, played with expert scene-chewing ability by Raul Julia in his final onscreen performance. The movie is bad. It tries to craft a narrative around the game, and somehow makes things too complicated. Much of it just doesn’t make sense, and its tongue-in-cheek campiness doesn’t help.

There have been more attempts since that film to cash in on the Street Fighter franchise. An unrelated film released in 2009 called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, which many people consider to be one of the worst movies ever made. A television show called Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist saw life in 2014, but mostly resonated with fans of the series (I learned about its existence while writing this). The Fighters have found most of their success in video games, but now Legendary looks to change that.

Fresh off the massive success of A Minecraft Movie, Legendary is moving forward with a Street Fighter flick directed by Kitao Sakurai, who replaced Danny and Michael Philippou (the minds behind Talk to Me). Now, a cast is beginning to come together. Deadline is reporting that Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo have joined the cast. Congrats to those folks, but the big news is in two other names: Mr. Minecraft Mullet himself, Jason Momoa, and WWE superstar Roman Reigns.

Momoa makes a lot of sense for a Street Fighter movie. His larger-than-life personality and muscles would make him a fun fit for a film where folks with big personas battle it out in crazy places. Also, Momoa was just in a very successful movie based on a video game, where the story was more or less generated out of thin air with the game’s setting as a backdrop. People love him, he’s good at his thing, and he has mainstream appeal. Roman Reigns? Not so much.

I’ve made it no secret that I am a big wrestling fan, and I love Roman Reigns as a wrestler. He’s spent a decade cultivating an in-ring character that will stand the test of time as one of the best. He is very good at what professional wrestling is, and WWE has been high on him as a star, but his attempts to move into Hollywood have not gone well. There have been rumors he would make his way to Hollywood, but those haven’t panned out. The biggest example was him getting cast in Hobbs & Shaw alongside his cousin, Dwayne The Rock Johnson. A big deal was made out of that move, only for Reigns to show up in the film with no lines.

It could just be a case of the timing working out. Pro Wrestling is more popular than ever, and superstars are popping up in movies more and more. Whether it sticks is always the question. The WWE has moved past creating movies as vehicles for their own stars, who are often not the best actors. For them to move into the mainstream, they’ll have to stand on their own against people who are more comfortable acting when there aren’t 40,000 people screaming at them. Reigns starring in a movie based on a big IP with someone like Momoa will be a huge test. But, when you’re adapting something that has experienced miss after miss, you may as well throw things at the wall and see what sticks.