"Street Fighter," the latest attempt to turn a fighting-game franchise into a movie, opened at No. 1 over the weekend with roughly $30.8 million domestic from 3,575 theaters, according to The Numbers' weekend chart. Thursday preview screenings alone brought in about $4 million — just short of the $5.2 million "Mortal Kombat II" posted in its own previews, the most direct benchmark for a modern video-game fighting adaptation.
Directed by Kitao Sakurai on a reported $82 million budget before marketing, the film opened to a critical reception that ran well behind the box office. Its Rotten Tomatoes score started in the high-20s to low-30s percent range on opening day and climbed to roughly 45% as more reviews came in, while Metacritic placed it around 46 out of 100. Audiences disagreed sharply: the film's Popcornmeter score sat above 80% based on more than 250 verified ratings.
A Crowded, Colorful Roster
The cast leans heavily on stunt and wrestling pedigree alongside more traditional acting credits: Andrew Koji plays Ryu, Noah Centineo is Ken, and Callina Liang takes on Chun-Li, with David Dastmalchian as the villainous M. Bison. Jason Momoa, WWE's Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, rapper-actor 50 Cent and singer Orville Peck round out the fighter roster as Blanka, Akuma, Guile, Balrog and Vega, respectively.
Critics who reviewed the film generally praised its 2D-animated flashback sequences and some of its fight choreography — Rhodes and Reigns drew specific notice — while faulting a cluttered script and an ending several reviewers described as abrupt and heavy on sequel setup. Whether that franchise future materializes will depend largely on how the film holds up against new competition this week, including A24's specialty hit "You Can See Everything," which is expanding into more theaters just as "Street Fighter" enters its second weekend.
The opening weekend was a crowded one industry-wide: another newsroom's wider look at the same weekend found Disney's "Whalefall" underperforming badly enough to become October's third notable box-office casualty, even as "Street Fighter" claimed the top spot.