When you think of all-time great beat’em up games a few names come to mind. There is of course Double Dragon, River City Ransom, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but for many the best of them all is Streets of Rage. SEGA’s beat’em up series received a trilogy of games in the 90s and each one was incredibly popular and well received. The story of former police officer vigilantes using nothing but their fists to fight off a corrupt government in a fictional city was just enough of a hook to bring in plenty of fans.
While Streets of Rage 4 wasn’t quite as popular as the originals, its 2020 release managed to hit a decent level of nostalgia that fans were yearning for. This, and also the recent success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, may have been just the push SEGA needed to greenlight a reported upcoming Streets of Rage movie. According to Deadline, a Streets of Rage movie is in the works and it already has some notable names and quite a resume behind the production of it.
On the heels of its success with Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog films, SEGA has another franchise coming to the big screen with beat ’em up game Streets of Rage getting the film treatment, sources tell Deadline. Derek Kolstad, who created the John Wick action franchise and penned the Bob Odenkirk actioner Nobody, wrote the script on spec.
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Sonic producer dj2 Entertainment and Escape Artists (Equalizer franchise) will produce the film adaptation.
Streets of Rage will be the latest project under dj2 Entertainment’s belt, following Sonic the Hedgehog 2‘s impressive box office performance.
It’s pretty cool that the success of Sonic has potentially created the opportunity for fans of other SEGA franchises to get movies made after their favorite games as well. Streets of Rage is a perfect candidate for a movie too, because its basic plot is open to interpretation. It’s also just an excuse to create a bunch of fun action set-pieces. With the right action stars involved this could be another fantastic video game movie — and maybe, just maybe, this is the video game adaptation The Rock was teasing as his next project.