"Street Fighter" filmmaker Kitao Sakurai based his video game movie on both Jolt Cola and Robert Altman films.

The filmmaker tells IndieWire that he wanted to bring both his love of the "weird and the weird" and the energy of a good Altman band to his unique video game adaptation.

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Kitao Sakurai's "Street Fighter" (based on the video game that first appeared in 1987) is a strange film. As the filmmaker told us in a recent interview, this is by design.

This movie is not conventional and may not be what the audience expects from the big release of "Street Fighter". As we were talking on Thursday, reviews were just coming out, and I saw a review that showed how much Dew Mountain was involved in the production, which I read to Sakwari. He corrected the record: it was actually Jolt.

Speaking of Jolt, one of the main cola brands of the '90s, the first act of "Street Fighter" serves as a spoof and love letter to the early 1990s (and there's even a Jolt reference) before switching gears to the setting of the second World Warrior Championship. Ryu (Andrew Koji), the world's greatest fighter, has been missing since winning the World Warrior Championship in 1987. Her adopted brother, Ken Masters (Noah Centineo), has gotten into a party machine that often features on MTV's Spring Break coverage. The evil M. Bison (David Dasmalchian) has organized a new World Warrior tournament in hopes of conquering Ryu and stealing his powers. Related stories Production of "Batman: Part II" resumes with Steven Soderbergh for Matt Reeves. Netflix Dazzle: Bela Bajaria steps down as chief content officer, ex-Disney exec Peter Rice steps in.

Sakurai, best known for his work on projects like The Eric Andre Show and Beef, explains how he ended up directing Street Fighter after the Filippo brothers left the project in 2024.

IndieWire: How did you come to that conclusion? You're not the first filmmaker I think of when I think of Street Fighter.

But this is one that I don't immediately think of anyone else either. So it makes sense, but it's amazing…

Well, the Filippo brothers were originally in it and couldn't do it because they were working on their second movie, although they do have a cameo in Street Fighter.

So when you're transported to Metrolao, before the Guile-Dan-Ken corridor scene? While you're checking out the cityscape, the two fight over a car, just beating each other up. They are Filippo's brothers. So basically what happened was that Legendary was looking for a filmmaker, and I think to [producer] Kel Buter's credit, he knew that the film wanted, for lack of a better word, a tone and an approach that was unconventional.

And obviously from doing the Eric Andre show and Biff and Dave, what I like to do are things that are visually weird and weird [and] work on an emotional level, but also work on a level that's very distinct and weird and brings something else. I think that's what they wanted from Street Fighter, an unconventional approach.

Not only that, being born in Japan and growing up between Japan and America as a child, I had a very deep cultural connection to the material that I thought was unique and they would appreciate it. I was able to speak to the background of the characters in a way that informed me of this different cultural layer.

I think if you look at my work, I like things that have a kind of gonzo, a little crazy energy that comes not only from the writing itself, but from the way we approach production and doing things that are funny or things that are a little more reality-based. There was interest in it.

You mentioned energy. The reviews are coming in right as we speak, and I see one of them is already asking how much Shabnam Koh was involved in directing this film…

In the 90s, it was hard to find. You can't find it anywhere.

You also mentioned the tone. The first act of the film is basically a great 90s spoof. In the second act, it might become more than what people expect from a "Street Fighter" movie. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the whole movie was just a 90s spoof?

No, I think you should set the table. I mean, there are natural reasons why this change happens. These characters are together, and they're different in this city, which has a bit more of a world-building element, whereas the first game was set in Miami in the early 90s. I think that this change is organic. But, yeah, I definitely really wanted to set the table. And I'm sure you can tell, not only is the movie set in the 90s, but I wanted the movie to feel like it was made in the 90s. It has been around since the 90's and many of the choices were almost in character.

If this had actually been made in 1993, in terms of effects, people would have had a lot of questions like, "Honey, how did they do those effects?" But the first third, yes, there are a lot of CRT TV screens.

For me, the 90s served many purposes. On the one hand, it's kind of fun and nostalgic, which adds a layer of fun to the film. But I also wanted to do this almost subversive take on that in "traditional IP movies" or video game movies, what often happens is that the weirder elements and the stranger elements that don't feel like they translate to film are softened. Sharp edges round out the weirder features of a video game.

For me, I want to take an approach where we almost emphasize those quirks: the hair or all the clothes the characters are wearing, especially Street Fighter II. But, to do that, I needed a universe to support it, so that was also a big idea behind the 90s as an alternate universe. My approach wasn't to say, "This movie takes place on October 3, 1993." It was more like we're in a slightly different world, which is the early 90s, but it's a bit of its own thing.

And also [to] set the film in a period that I knew would be interesting to a Gen Z audience. Because the '90s are cool, the music and the fashion of the '90s, and there's an energy that I think people are digging.

You mentioned freedom. How was this different from the Filippo brothers? Did you have the idea for the first job?

It was kind of more like that. I went in and reworked it significantly. We've gone through quite a few drafts to get from the fledgling seed that I came in to where we are now.

Because I feel like you don't have much time to do this.

Yeah it was hectic also, it was really crazy because I got it and we started developing it. And then Sunny [Lee Seung-jin] from Beef called me and said, "Hey...Jake Schreier, the director of Season 1, was making Lightning, I need someone to do what Jake did in Season 1." And so, the first part of the year, I was doing Beef Season 2, and I immediately got on a plane and went to Australia to do Street Fighter. i

It was this weird brain split where half of my brain was trying to create this insanely gonzo, totally distracting "Street Fighter" and the other half of my brain was trying to create this insanely awesome Oscar Isaac-Carey Mulligan piece of drama.

I think, oddly enough, that's where I do my best work. If I'm multitasking, it allows me to focus on one thing, and then my subconscious does the deeper work in the background. And when I come back to it after a few days, there are new thoughts about it that maybe I wouldn't have thought of if I'd just consciously pushed something really hard.

But with Street Fighter, it's something I was very interested in from the beginning — and because it had a lot to do with my childhood and my sense of nostalgia. I love movies that have a set where the energy of the group means something. It's a weird reference for what we're talking about, but I'm thinking about "Nashville."

Yes, he is my hero. My senior year of high school - a little aside - I was going to study for finals to get into college, but at the Cleveland Cinematheque where I grew up, and here I am now, they were doing this incredible Altman in the 70s retrospective, where they had prints of every single film he made in the 70s.

So instead of studying for finals that whole month, I just lived at the Cinematheque and saw every single Altman movie. But, yeah, the Altman bands that spoke to me, and I just love groups of people that are weird and don't seem like they belong together, the togetherness and the energy that creates. Something special about it.

[Editor's note: Some light spoilers for the ending of "Street Fighter" follow.]

This is a movie that seems pretty sure to get a sequel. It ends in the middle of the scene.

Obviously, I want to leave the film open so that the story is more open.

But at the same time, in Marvel movies or any movie, they do it all the time. And I was like, "Let's do it."

They usually do this in a post-credits scene, you got around it.

Well, we also have a post-credits scene. I think, more than teasing the sequel, what I wanted to leave the audience with was the family finding each other. And that to me is really in the spirit of "Street Fighter," the feeling that this group is together.

As a franchise, Street Fighter has been around for almost 40 years. There are so many stories, so how do you make a movie where it feels like everything ends? This is also not true for franchises. So it wasn't so much, "Yeah, we're definitely getting a sequel," but more like, "Look, if we're going to tell a Street Fighter story, it needs to be a story that's at the beginning of the franchise and just leaves room for the story to continue." Just by definition, I mean 'street fighter', it can't be over that easily.

Paramount's Street Fighter is now in theaters.