I was holding out on posting this, hoping that somehow Nexus Point News’ report would be wrong. Sadly, THR has confirmed Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson will play Balrog in Legendary’s live-action Street Fighter movie. >sigh< One of the most iconic of the Capcom fighting game’s cast, Balrog is a brutal boxer and bodyguard to primary villain, M. Bison. He was patterned after real-life boxer Mike Tyson, which included giving him the name M. Bison before it was swapped to Balrog when the character was introduced in America.
To Fitty’s credit, he’s carved out a place for himself in the low-budget action/crime movie genre with roles in all three Escape Plan movies, Expend4bles, and loads more that you’ve probably never heard of. There’s an actual 50 Cent Action channel that is number one on Roku, so there ya go.
In a more reasonable move, stand-up comedian Andrew Schulz has joined the cast as comedy character Dan Hibiki, according to Deadline. Dan is a joke character, a parody of SNK’s Art of Fighting characters Ryo and Robert, who were seen as a ripoff of Street Fighter‘s Ryu and Ken. Dan, who wears a fading pink gi and sports a weak facsimile of Ryu and Ken’s Ansatsuken Karate, is portrayed as arrogant, overconfident, yet utterly useless in battle.
It’s an oddly eclectic cast being put together for Street Fighter. Noah Centineo is set to play Ken, with Andrew Koji as his best friend and rival, Ryu. WWE superstar Roman Reigns plays Akuma, their demonic counterpart. Jason Momoa is the feral Blanka, with Callina Liang recently cast as Chun-Li and masked country singer Orville Peck as the high-flying villain Vega.
Bad Trip director Kitao Sakurai is behind the camera, taking over after Danny and Michael Philippou backed out. Dalan Musson, a co-writer on Captain America: Brave New World, wrote the screenplay with filming to begin in August.
As someone who really wants this Street Fighter movie to be taken seriously and to be, y’know, good, the casting of 50 Cent makes my stomach hurt. Especially as Balrog who is likely to have a lot of screen time. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong. Fingers crossed that I am. That said, 50 Cent, Roman Reigns, and Jason Momoa in the same movie is pretty wild.
