Back when Hollywood was only just waking up to the idea of turning games into movies, Capcom joined forces with director and screenwriter Steven E. de Souza to create a film based on its Street Fighter franchise, resulting in one of the most infamous cinematic video game adaptions of all time – one that was plagued by drug-taking, military coups and reshoots.
Costing $35 million, the movie generated $99.4 million at the box office, and, by the time home media sales had been taken into account, it apparently earned Capcom $165 million – not a bad side hustle, but one that arguably damaged the reputation of the series due to its poor critical reception.
Speaking to The Guardian back in 2018, de Souza explained some of the issues he encountered whilst working on the movie – the most pressing of which involved the lead actor, Jean-Claude Van Damme:
I couldn’t talk about it at the time, but I can now: Jean-Claude was coked out of his mind. The studio had hired a wrangler to take care of him, but unfortunately the wrangler himself was a bad influence. Jean-Claude was calling in sick so much I had to keep looking through the script to find something else to film; I couldn’t just sit around for hours waiting for him. On two occasions, the producers allowed him to go to Hong Kong, and both occasions he came back late – on Mondays he just wasn’t there at all.
The good news is that the movie is currently free to view on YouTube's Movies & TV channel, but only in the US. Get it while it's hot.