The “Street Fighter” franchise is a fighting game institution as well as a pop culture one. You don’t have to be a fighting aficionado to know who Ryu, Chun Li or Guile are. Back in 2023, a new film entry was announced, and we were cautiously optimistic. Things were quiet until June of 2024 when the original directors exited the project. Then more silence. Cut to February of 2025, and news of a replacement director hit. A new director wasn’t really alarming for the status of the project, but keeping the same early 2026 release date did.
Which doesn’t matter now, because as of this week, the film has been scrubbed from Sony Pictures‘ upcoming release slate entirely.
Sony hasn’t delayed the film to another date, they flat-out removed it from the schedule. To compensate for this, they moved the upcoming shark film “Beneath the Storm” from August 2025 to July of 2026.
This isn’t to say “Street Fighter” is cancelled, but this may indicate more work needs to be done to complete it. Having things on the schedule keeps stockholders and executives happy. Delays are one thing, complete removals are another.
Perhaps a good litmus test to see if this film gets back on track will be what happens with “Mortal Kombat 2“ in October. While it’s not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison, there’s enough of an overlap to see how audiences are stomaching adaptations of fighting games. That film doesn’t hit until October, so maybe we’ll hear more about “Street Fighter” in the interim. There’s plenty to hear about considering there have been no cast announcements, no hint of what the story is, or even if they have a story to work with. Did this thing even get a script? We’ll keep you posted.
