The fighting game genre has more than a mixed reputation when it comes to adaptations, and that goes at least quadruple or quintuple for the likes of Tekken.
Matt McMuscles just released the latest episode in his “What Happened?” series taking a look at the creation and behind the scenes shenanigans of the stinker that was the live action Tekken film.
Initial plans for a movie version of the King of Iron Fist Tournament began around a decade before they’d eventually come to fruition with Producer Steven Paul having a direct connection to Namco’s founder Masaya Nakamura, but the biggest thing their company had ever released at that point was… Baby Geniuses.
On top of that, they also hired the writes of Face Off to pen the script, which you just know is going to be a great sign for things to come, even if they’d basically have to start over from scratch eventually.
There were apparently some exciting negotiations to try and get Jackie Chan and Jet Li to star in the film opposite each other, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for them) this didn’t pan out.
What is a shame though is their plan to hand Chan the role of Lei Wulong, which would have been perfect considering the fighter is heavily inspired by the martial arts film master’s various roles.
On top of that, the producers apparently also pursued former WWE star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to portray King, but that probably wouldn’t fly if he couldn’t actually talk or show his face.
Who they did get, however, was Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa to play Heihachi Mishima as basically the standout of the film. Tagawa of course played Shang Tsung in the original Mortal Kombat movie before eventually returning to reprise his role in Mortal Kombat 11, which is pretty funny since one of the goals of the Tekken film was to not copy Mortal Kombat.
And this is all before filming has even started, let alone the post-production and release.
We recommend checking out the full episode of What Happened from Matt McMuscles below for the complete story as to what went wrong with adapting one of the biggest fighting game franchises into a film with a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.