Andrew Schulz believes the new Street Fighter film will succeed where the 1994 version failed.
The comedian and podcaster, speaking to The National from Sydney while on location and ahead of his stand-up show at the Coca-Cola Arena for the Dubai Comedy Festival on October 7, says the cast is determined to avoid the pitfalls that made the original such a disappointment.
“We’re all just hoping this is better than the first Street Fighter. That’s all that matters,” he says. “That movie was horrible. If I’m not mistaken, somehow [star of the original] Jean-Claude Van Damme, with a European accent, was playing an American war hero.
“I don’t know how that works. I don’t even know if they acknowledged it in the movie at all, but this one is going to knock that one out of the park.”
Schulz says the dire reputation of the original – which was also shot in Australia and starred Van Damme as US military soldier Guile, Australian pop star Kylie Minogue as Cammy and the late Raul Julia as the nemesis M. Bison – can actually help the remake scheduled for release in October 2026.
“I actually think that in a weird way there’s less pressure. There’s more pressure when you’re trying to remake an iconic, amazing movie like The Godfather or something,” Schulz says.
“But when you’re remaking a movie from an iconic franchise, but the first one didn’t work out, the audience is thinking, ‘Hey, please give us what we imagine in this world. Give us what we assume these characters are. Give us the stories that we would assume happen.’”
From what is reported, the story is centred on an international fighting tournament, with competitors entering for their own personal reasons. The announced characters include stalwarts from the original Street Fighter arcade game, which premiered in 1987 and went on to spawn more than a dozen sequels and spin-offs, selling over 50 million copies worldwide.
Among them are the Brazilian mutant fighter Blanka (Jason Momoa), Indian actor Vidyut Jammwal as the lethal yogi Dhalsim and hip-hop star 50 Cent as the renegade American boxer Balrog.
Schulz’s comedic gifts will be channelled in the role of Dan Hibiki, introduced in the 1995 iteration Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior’s Dream, as a brash fighter on a quest to avenge his father’s death.
As a fan of the early games, Schulz was not aware of Hibiki when offered the role. “I never knew Dan. I stopped playing Street Fighter before he came around, but I’m an early adopter,” he says.
“Street Fighter to me is the first fighting game – and everything else, from other classics like Mortal Kombat, where they added blood that was exciting when we were kids, to the fighting styles in Tekken, is derivative of Street Fighter.”
It is that cultural resonance allowing the film to assemble a cast of long-time fans of the franchise. “It made it easier to get people to come and work on the film and be part of it,” Schulz says. “Guys who were very busy and very expensive remembered playing it as kids. They were like, ‘Oh, I got to be part of this.’”
Why the 1994 film failed
Considered a disappointment that later gained a modest cult following, the first Street Fighter was the directorial debut of Steven E. de Souza, best known as the writer of Die Hard. De Souza has since admitted he wrote the initial draft of the script overnight.
With Jean-Claude Van Damme still a major box office draw after hits such as Universal Soldier and Timecop, he was cast as Guile – complete with his unmistakable Belgian accent. His fee, reported at $8 million, is said to have taken up nearly a quarter of the film’s $35 million budget.
Shot between Australia and Thailand on a tight schedule, the production suffered from constant rewrites. The final cut veered unevenly between action, comedy and drama. Perhaps most damaging was the decision to strip away the franchise’s central plot – a fighting tournament – in favour of a military rescue story.
The film ultimately grossed $99 million worldwide, enough to cover costs but far from the blockbuster producers envisioned. Its lasting high point remains Raul Julia’s flamboyant turn as M. Bison, delivered while the actor was gravely ill. Julia died in November 1994, shortly before the film’s release.
Andrew Schulz performs at Coca-Cola Arena, Dubai on October 7. Show starts at 8pm; tickets from Dh295
