Actor, writer, director, and action designer Joey Ansah sat down with Dexerto to dish on the new Street Fighter movie and the dark TV series he wrote for the franchise that never got made.
Joey Ansah is wrapping up the press tour for his latest film The Running Man, where he starred as a hunter pursuing Glenn Powell in a modern adaptation of Stephen King’s action-packed 80s novel.
Ansah’s got a long list of major Hollywood movies to which he’s lent his talents, including Mission Impossible: Fallout, Netflix’s The Old Guard, and The Bourne Ultimatum, to name a few.
He’s also the mind behind Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, a 13-episode mini-series that focused on the relationships between Ryu and Ken, their master Gouken, and Akuma. The show, released in 2014, was a smash hit among fans of the series, and has remained as one of the most faithful adaptations of Capcom’s fist-flying franchise to this day.
It’s been ten years since Ansah’s project was released into the wild. Now there’s a new adaptation hitting the big screen, starring major names like Game of Thrones’ Jason Momoa, WWE star Cody Rhodes, and even rapper Fifty Cent.
The film, set to release in October 2026, hearkens back to the classic 1994 Street Fighter II live-action film in both its visual style and overall vibe; a first-look at the flick promises hilariously unserious character interactions and over-the-top fight scenes (but at least it’s going heavy with the references, giving a nod to SFII’s bonus stage with Ken beating up a Lexus LS400).
For Ansah, this goofy, comedic take on the historic fighting game franchise may divide its fanbase. He’s cautiously optimistic about how it’ll turn out, but feels that a darker, grittier version of Street Fighter’s surprisingly serious (albeit somewhat convoluted) storyline would have honored the series in a more meaningful way.
Assassin’s Fist director is not the target audience for the new Street Fighter movie
Ansah compared the trailer to other video game films in recent memory, citing Sonic the Hedgehog, the Minecraft Movie, and the Super Mario Bros. Movie. This new movie, he argues, isn’t primarily for the old-heads who lined up to play Street Fighter II in arcades; instead, he feels it’s marketed to get younger generations interested in Street Fighter 6.
“I class myself, given my age, as one of the OG Street Fighter heads,” he prefaced. “I was there when Street Fighter II came out on the Super Nintendo. It was in the arcades. I was the prime audience for catching that wave of Street Fighter hysteria. Assassin’s Fist was a real, authentic love letter to Street Fighter, first and foremost, that OG generation that really know the DNA of Street Fighter in depth. And you saw the result, you saw the way it resonated with the audience.
“I think the M.O. from Capcom is that this movie needs to serve as a commercial for Street Fighter 6. If you look at it from the perspective of a young kid who went to the cinema to see the Minecraft Movie and loved it, and saw Sonic at the theater and loved it, but maybe never even grew up playing the games when Sonic was actually a big deal… if their first experience of the Street Fighter IP is this movie and they think it’s zany and it’s comedic and the characters are all larger-than-life, they may think, ‘Oh, if the game’s like that, I want to now check out the game.'”
Ansah strongly feels that Street Fighter boasts dark themes that were present in the older games, specifically citing the Alpha series, which deserve to be placed in the limelight. But he remains open-minded to how the cast will interpret the game’s beloved characters, making special mention of Andrew Koji as Ryu.
“Look at how different the art style and tone, and even the narrative tone of Street Fighter 6 is compared to Street Fighter Alpha. You know, some of the Street Fighter games had much darker and more serious themes. Even look at Blanka. He’s now in a safari suit with a hat. He’s become something very different to who we perceived Blanka to be in the Street Fighter II days,” he said.
“From that point of view, I’m like, cool. I see what Capcom is going for. Is that how I would do Street Fighter if I was given the reins? No. But when you’re looking at movie content that’s going to service a product, then maybe that’s the way to go.”
We could’ve had a Game of Thrones-level Street Fighter series, but Hollywood got in the way
Assassin’s Fist is far from the only Street Fighter series Ansah has worked on; he also directed and produced the 2010 short film Street Fighter: Legacy, as well as the tie-in web series Street Fighter: Resurrection.
He’d also planned a second season of Assassin’s Fist called Street Fighter: World Warrior, which would have introduced the shadowy crime syndicate led by mainstay villain M. Bison, as well as his famous World Warrior martial arts tournament.
In fact, Ansah revealed that he’s written up a 120-page treatment for seasons one and two of the World Warrior sequel series. The first season would focus on the Street Fighter I tournament, featuring characters like Geki and Gen, while season two would hone in on Bison’s World Warrior tournament.
This sequel series never got off the ground, though. Ansah explained the multitude of issues and creative clashes he endured with studios and staff that ultimately canned the project, calling it the “great tragedy” of his life.
“It all fell apart at the start line,” he said. “That was five years of my life, and it was a very painful thing for me that I guess I’m at peace with now. I did a hell of a lot of work. I’ve already written this thing. I wrote a pilot and screenplay, so I’ve done a hell of a lot of work already. And I actually think if this thing never gets made, I’ll release it one day. Either I’ll just release the treatment out into the ether, or maybe I’ll maybe do a thing with Capcom to get Udon to turn my treatment into a graphic novel, you know?
“The problem is this: If I could return, if I could go back in time to just after Assassin’s Fist’s release, I would have cut out the studio middle man and gone with Capcom directly to Netflix or Amazon and said, ‘We want to do this. It’s had millions of views and it was super critically well received, and we want to do hour-long episodes, another season, but we don’t need to have a crazy budget.'”
Ansah explained that other, high-profile showrunners had been attached to the project, whose designs for the series drastically clashed with his and Capcom’s vision for the Street Fighter franchise. This, alongside delays in getting a licensing deal made between Capcom and certain studios to produce the show, caused everything to crumble.
“In hindsight, after Assassin’s Fist, it should have been, ‘We’ll make this for the lowest potential TV budget that exists, but as long as I have the creative control…’ and then if that was a success, then eventually people will throw money at you if you’re proving yourself. We had the opportunity to go from Assassin’s Fist to the biggest Game of Thrones-size TV show.”
That’s not all; Ansah is so in love with the Street Fighter series, and so dedicated to bringing it to life authentically, that he’s written up an entire script for a standalone show focusing on the origin of Vega called ‘Vega: Blood and Sand.’
From Ansah’s description, it would delve into the psychology behind Vega’s attachment to his mother and how he inherited his mask and claw from Geki — but it, like his World Warrior series, never made it off the ground.
“Assassin’s Fist is one of the greatest things of my life, achieving the impossible and making this piece of art that fans love. It’s so nice to this day reading reviews from people who are only discovering Assassin’s Fist now more than a decade on, and that will never be taken away. That’s always going to be part of my story. Will I ever go back to writing or directing Street Fighter? Who knows? We’ll see what the future holds.”
Popular gacha game dev blames “AI slop” for damaging player trust