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It was recently announced that SNK's Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting video game series are being adapted into movies, webtoons and animation by a company called The Arena (previously known as Arena SNK).
First up, the live-action movies Geese and Fatal Fury are on the horizon. The former will tell the origin story of series antagonist Geese Howard, based on a screenplay penned by Grant Singer.
Alongside that will be a live-action movie based on the wider Fatal Fury franchise, scripted by David S. Goyer – whose credits include Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Blade trilogy and Terminator: Dark Fate.
It will follow the core storyline of the games, with Andy and Terry Bogard embarking on a quest for revenge following the brutal death of their father at the hands of Geese Howard.
In addition to these live-action efforts, we're getting an Art of Fighting webtoon, written and produced by Brandon Chen. An animated series called Fatal Fury: The Vow is also in production at Skybound, which recently adapted Robert Kirkman's Invincible comic book into an animated series for Amazon. It is understood that this series is intended for release on YouTube, and it follows Andy and Terry's early years.
This isn't the first time Fatal Fury has been adapted into animation; in the early '90s, we got the anime productions Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf and Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle. However, I would argue that, despite the franchise's fame in the world of video games, it doesn't come anywhere close to matching the global recognition of, say, Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.
Granted, Fatal Fury is a landmark release in the realm of one-on-one fighters; conceived by Street Fighter co-creator Takashi Nishiyama following his defection from Capcom to SNK, it has received multiple sequels over the years, with the most recent coming in 2025. However, I'd argue that, since the arrival of The King of Fighters series in 1994 (which includes Fatal Fury characters), Fatal Fury hasn't been SNK's leading fighting game franchise.
Taking that into account, it's worth noting that King of Fighters itself has previously been adapted into a live-action movie. 2009's The King of Fighters starred Maggie Q, Sean Faris, Ray Park and David Leitch, and grossed just over $500,000 on a reported $12 million budget. While you could rightly argue that the quality of the movie was partly to blame for its commercial and critical shortcomings, the fact that most casual cinemagoers didn't know the series will surely have played a part.
What hope does Fatal Fury have, then, or Art of Fighting, a franchise which hasn't had a video game instalment since 1996's Art of Fighting 3 – 30 years ago? While Art of Fighting isn't getting a live-action movie at this point, it still seems like a bizarre choice; while its smoothly-scaled sprites were impressive back in 1992, I'd argue it was never really considered to be one of the best one-on-one fighters, even during its glory days.
Putting SNK's games to one side for a moment, it's worth highlighting the fact that even 'dead certs' like Street Fighter don't always transfer their small-screen success to the big screen. While the critically mauled 1994 movie was actually a financial success (and continues to be), 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li cost £50 million and made just £12.5 million at the box office, earning scathing reviews in the process. It remains to be seen if this year's Street Fighter movie reboot will avoid the same fate.
Before anyone misunderstands what I'm saying, I'm actually very interested to see what a Fatal Fury live-action movie could look like; as an avid arcade-goer in the early '90s (and a fighting game nut to boot), I wasted a lot of coins on the series – so naturally I'm keen to see how it can possibly be translated to the silver screen.
I'm just not sure the rest of the world will feel even remotely the same way.