These clips are hitting the internets to help promote the movie’s DVD release. The home version includes bonus footage, commentary and a full-length comic movie “Street Fighter Round One: FIGHT!”

Exclusive Street Fighter Blu-ray & DVD Bonus Clips [Coming Soon via io9]

Besides the bizarre reason behind the party, it sounds like a good time. The folks will be setting up for some street fighter play, give-aways and “plenty of booze to dull the pain.”

Take pictures for us if you go.

Look at that cover! It should come with a disclaimer: contains 5% actual Kristen Kreuk. And also a warning: Chris Klein is not actually Nicolas Cage.

The Blu-Ray edition will be out at the end of June, and inexplicably comes on three discs, including an unrated edition of the movie. The one shining light is that, since there’s three discs, there’s surely room in there for the Chun-Li vs Balrog battle that has been spoken of, but never seen.

Trade publication The Hollywood Reporter reported that Sony Pictures is planning on bringing wonderfully stoic PlayStation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus to the big screen.

Producer Kevin Misher, responsible for films such as The Scorpion King and The Interpreter, as well as the upcoming fighting movie Fighting, has apparently roped in scribe Justin Marks to write the script. Marks penned the disastrous Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

Japanese site Famitsu contacted Sony Computer Entertainment about the Shadow of the Colossus adaptation, and Sony replied, “We will refrain from commenting about that.” We’ll do Sony one better: How about refraining from making it?

[海外ゲームニュース]『ワンダと巨像』がハリウッドで映画化進行中？ [Famitsu]

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a flop — even American Pie actor Chris Klein can’t save it. Well, not that he ever could.

Still, cinematic blunders aside, Klein loves Street Fighter. While Legend of Chun-Li actress Kristen Kruek has only played the game once, Klein grew up playing the game.

“Although I’ve played a lot, I’m certainly not the best or most avid gamer out there, and so for me Dhalsim, I appreciated him because his kicks and punches stretch across the screen so you can keep your opponent at bay,” Klein says. “Plus, you can keep them away from doing some of those special moves that you have to be close in on to perform. I had a lot of success with him.”

Klein calls Street Fighter IV “absolutely the coolest version of Street Fighter.” Wish the same could be said about the movie.

The Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li star talks about which character’s style he prefers to deliver a beat-down. Hint: It’s not Chun-Li. [GameDaily via GoNintendo]

Despite the fact that we hated it… and every other reviewer in the country hated it, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li managed to break the top ten for the weekend box office.

The Legend of Chun-Li pulled in US$4.65 million over its first weekend, landing it in the eight spot for the top ten box offices for the weekend in the U.S., according to Hollywood Reporter.

That means Chun-Li beat out Fired Up! and Confessions of a Shopaholic, but it last to seven other movies.

1. Madea Goes to Jail
2. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Taken
5. He’s Just Not That Into You
6. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
7. Coraline
8. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
9. Confessions of a Shopaholic
10. Fired Up!

Did you see the movie over the weekend? Is it as bad as everyone is saying it is?

USA Weekend Box-Office Summary [IMDB]

Ashcraft has seen the new Street Fighter movie, The Legend of Chun-Li. Didn’t like it much. But what do film critics think of the flick, starring Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein & Michael Clarke Duncan?

They are, unsurprisingly, not fans.

The film currently has a Metacritic rating of 21 (out of a possible 100), while even more damningly, it has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of …00%. Meaning that every single review of the film the site has collected has given it the thumbs down.

Here are some of the review highlights.

The Onion AV Club:

The problems with Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li began with the casting of dead-eyed, sleepy-voiced, charisma-impaired automaton Kristin Kreuk.

MSNBC:

I can’t remember the last time I watched an actor fail to walk into a room convincingly, but Chris Klein does it. Look for a YouTube montage of his Street Fighter performance to pop up any day now.

Entertainment Weekly:

Don’t be fooled by the low grade: This sequel-in-spirit to Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 1994 dud doesn’t even succeed in being memorably bad.

On a related note, how’d it do at the box office? About as well. Despite opening on 1136 screens, it only made $4.65 million, meaning every theatre that screened the movie only pulled in an average of $4,093.

Oh dear. Ah well, look on the bright side, Capcom. The Lost Planet movie can’t be any worse!

[Metacritic]
[Rotten Tomatoes]

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is Hollywood’s second live-action effort at bringing Street Fighter to the silver screen. The first Street Fighter was generally panned by critics, so this has to be better.

Right? Right?!

The original Street Fighter (1994) was so bad, it’s good. Heavy on camp and with a solid performance from the late Raul Julia, the hammy flick has been considered a cult classic by some viewers in recent years — with others would prefer to forget the motion picture ever happened.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a reboot of sorts, trying to do to Street Fighter what, for example, Batman Begins did to Batman.

But does it succeed in breathing new life into Hollywood’s take on Street Fighter?

Loved
Kristin Kreuk – Kristin Kreuk does not look like Chun-Li — she knows that! But she does try to bring some humanity and realism to the character.

Gritty – The Street Fighter series has always had a wonderfully gritty, grimy feel to it. It’s not called Street Fighter on accident! The movie attempts to capture that vibe of the streets (in this case, Bangkok), and succeeds in doing so to an extent. Ditto for characters: Smart move not to put Bison in a red cape, but a business suit.

Fight Scenes – A movie about Street Fighter needs fighting. The fight scenes are workman-like in their choreography and do the job. The film’s director Andrzej Bartkowiak helmed the Jet Li flick Romeo Must Die, so he knows how to shoot a fight. He also directed the Doom movie, so he knows how to… Yeah.

Hated
The Story – Makes. No. Sense. Since the source material is a fighting game, the film’s writer and director have ample room to explore and spin a yarn. They do, but the end result is half-baked.

Bison’s origin story – Do we even need an origin story for Bison? How about better characterization? Instead of having him perform some bizarre ritual to become evil, why not have Akuma appear as some Faust-like character? Makes sense in the Street Fighter mythos and saves us a goofy Bison backstory.

Chun-Li’s backstory – This is her film, she’s the show, but her character never really undergoes any real transformation. As a little girl she learns martial arts from her father. Later she learns some more martial arts from Gen. There’s fighting in-between. It all feels flat. In the film, she’s not an Interpol cop like she is in the game. She’s a pianist who knows martial arts. What’s wrong with having her be a cop? Her father was a cop, and she becomes a cop to avenge her father’s death. If it’s not broke…

The Reason Bison Kidnaps Chun-Li’s Father – This is almost a silly as the bizarre ritual Bison performs, but not quite.

There are places where Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li succeeds, but those places are too far and too few in between. There is potential, however, in big screen versions of Street Fighter, and we do look forward to them. This, though, is a false start. Or rather, a false start 2: electric boogaloo.

The end result does show how far Hollywood has come since 1994. We don’t get a straight up video-game-turned-into-a-movie movie. What we do get just isn’t a very good film.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is released in U.S. theatres today.

Confused by our reviews? Read our F.A.Q.

Rule of thumb: Video game movies are not very good. I know it, you know it. Yet, game movies typically do pretty well at the box office. Why?

“Honestly, I really think it’s a marketing thing,” says Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li actress Kristen Kreuk. “There’s a built-in audience. But realistically, if you are trying to sell a film, you have a huge audience already.”

Case-in-point: Max Payne. While it was generally panned by critics, the movie took the box office’s No. 1 spot during its opening weekend and ended up turning a profit of around $50 million.

“It’s the same as with sports,” explains David Jaffe, creator of God of War. “If you’re a sports fan and the home team is losing, you’ll see the game in the hope your team will turn it around.”

One day, Hollywood will. Epic exec Mark Rein is optimistic, stating that big time movie producers like Jerry Bruckheimer, Peter Jackson and Thomas Tull are taking them seriously and treating them with importance.

“If you treat your material with importance then filmgoers will take it seriously. Did you ever think a theme-park ride would make a great movie? Jerry Bruckheimer did,” Rein said, “and he made three awesome movies based on it (the Pirates of the Caribbean series). Now he’s working with Prince of Persia. Peter Jackson created three movies based on a taking a classic fantasy novel seriously and won a Best Picture Oscar. Now he’s working with Halo. Thomas Tull reinvented Batman and Superman and now has one of the biggest movies ever with The Dark Knight, and now he’s working with Gears of War and World of Warcraft. So yes, I see good to reasons to be very optimistic about the film versions of these and other games.”

Adapting games has proven hard, but Hollywood will figure out how to do it. As Jaffe pointed out, “Comic books are much easier to adapt into movies because they are traditional story telling. Games are harder to adapt because at their very core, they’re games.”

Hollywood’s passion for the video game [Japan Times] [Pic]

Well, actress Kristen Kreuk wasn’t hired to do Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li for her gaming skills, but for her acting. Shocking, we know.

“I’ve only played Street Fighter once,” she told The Japan Times. “Growing up, I did watch my friends play it.” Instead, she based her interpretation of the character on what was in the script. You know, what actors usually do.

That doesn’t mean that she was obvious to Chun-Li — she wasn’t. Going in, she knew that she wouldn’t be able get her thighs as massively muscular as Chun-Li’s. “I thought if we were doing something realistic, then it wouldn’t be an issue,” she said.” But for fans, it is an issue, because that’s how they see their character.”

Kreuk is actually one of the brighter spots in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, so while it may be cringe worthy to hear she doesn’t actually play Street Fighter, gamers should put more importance on Hollywood just making a good picture.

‘Street Fighter’ star indifferent to video games [Japan Times] [Pic: Jean Snow]