Ryu & Ken Absent From Street Fighter Movie Cast News

According to the official blog of the Street Fighter movie, Ryu and Ken will not be featuring in the upcoming Street Fighter film being produced by Capcom and Hyde Park Entertainment. Instead the storyline will focus on Chun Li, played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk.

The latest post on the blog fields questions from fans of the film, the most pressing of which was whether Ryu and Ken would be in the motion picture, to which Producer Patrick Aiello responded:

"Justin Marks [Writer], Ashok Amritraj [Producer] and Capcom got together and decided to make it more of an origin story for Chun Li. There are just way too many characters in the Street Fighter universe to cram them all into one film. We want to do each one the justice he/she deserves. So, in short, Ken and Ryu will not be appearing in this film. But, that doesn't mean we won't see our red and white-clad heroes in potential sequels..."

However, the good news is that the film makers are going for a gritty, dramatic, and realistic tone to the movie, rather than the slightly camp feel of previous Street Fighter films and TV series (we're talking about the Van Damme/Minogue movie and 1995 animated series of course).

"Regarding the tone, I'm pleased to say we are certainly not going for camp or cheese or any kind of laughs," commented the blog's Administrator Aaron Horwitz. " A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the making of this film, and, you're gonna see a lot of those on film as well. While we're definitely not trying to make the next Citizen Kane, we are going for a somewhat more realistic, gritty, dramatic, and oh yes, action-packed direction than you might expect."

"It'd be silly to put Neal McDonough's Bison in a bright red suit and captain's hat with a pair of humongous shoulder pads," Horwitz continues. "It works great in the video game, but in real life, it just wouldn't look intimidating."

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (as it's currently listed on imdb) is due to be released some time before the end of the financial year (i.e. prior to April 1st 2009).