I hope you haven’t grown tired of the recent deluge of video game adaptations, because another entertaining one is on the way. Lionsgate has acquired the film rights to Streets of Rage, which will be developed and produced by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad. Production companies dj2 Entertainment and Escape Artists, who worked on the Sonic the Hedgehog films, are also engaged.
It was reported earlier this year that Kolstad was working on a Streets of Rage movie. While the games don’t exactly have a rich narrative to speak of, the beat-’em-up series fits right within Nobody writer Kolstad’s oeuvre of gritty, violent action. The series seems ripe for the picking after a successful revival in 2020 with Streets of Rage 4.
“When [dj2 CEO Dmitri M. Johnson] first mentioned the idea of cracking a Streets of Rage movie, I was so immediately freaking in,” Kolstad said in a statement, according to Variety. “And to play with Sega? The 10-year-old me is still grinning.”
Lionsgate will also put out the Borderlands movie, which completed filming last year but doesn’t yet have a release date. Among the many, many other movies and TV shows based on games that are in the works is a Ghost of Tsushima film, on which Chad Stahelski, the director of all four John Wick movies, is taking the reins.