The original Street Fighter film was well-regarded as a campy mess even back when it released in 1994, but that hasn’t stopped it from having serious staying power.
Capcom is still apparently making bank on the movie after 30 years, so it’s not too surprising that they’re trying to get a new live-action production going.
According to Poncho who claims to have attended Capcom’s most recent shareholders’ meeting on June 20, the Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme was brought up in their earnings.
Their notes say the presenters stated the Street Fighter adaptation still earns the company tens of millions of yen every year.
While that does sound like a huge number at face value, the current conversion rates aren’t quite as staggering — though still admittedly impressive for a video game film that’s 30 years old.
At the lower end, this could mean anywhere from like $65,000 USD to $620,000 though the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
This matches up with the last time we heard Capcom officially speak about the movie in 2018 where they stated it continued to make them around 50 million yen annually, which would equate to around $313,000.
Capcom funded the project back then for 4 billion yen ($36 million) while it earned back 15.5 billion yen ($136 million) as a huge hit for the company after Street Fighter 2’s popularity in the arcades had already peaked.
It’s interesting to see the film is still making the developer that much money after DVD sales have all but stopped and the Street Fighter movie doesn’t appear to be included in any streaming service (at least in the United States).
Last year, Legendary announced they were co-producing a new Street Fighter live action film with Capcom though not much has materialized from that deal yet besides a simple poster.
Brothers Danny and Michael Philippou were attached to direct the movie, which they seemed pretty excited for, but they recently dropped out of the project for reportedly scheduling conflicts.
With where things stand now, we probably won’t see a new Street Fighter film hit theaters until like 2027 while Capcom is not shying away from their push to continue adapting their games into other forms of media as we’ve seen with Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Dragon’s Dogma and soon to be Devil May Cry again.
There are a few other interesting notes from Poncho about the meeting as well including how despite 2023 being the year of Street Fighter 6, Resident Evil and Monster Hunter still made them the most profits.
When asked about the profitability of SF6’s DLC, Capcom allegedly said they’re in it for the long haul to please the fans over an extended return period.
And while their eSports ventures still aren’t making them tons of money, they hope further expansion overseas will make them profits in the medium to long term.
As for what the future holds for Street Fighter on the silver screen, it seems like we’re going to be waiting quite a bit longer to see how that’s going to shape up.