‘Streets of Rage’ Film Coming from ‘Sonic’s dj2 Entertainment
dj2 Entertainment isn’t slowing down anytime soon with video game adaptations. Streets of Rage is next in line.
Deadline has the exclusive and is adding that John Wick scribe Derek Kolstad, one of the busiest men in the TV/film industry right now, wrote a spec script, so the project isn’t starting from scratch now.
Streets of Rage will be the latest video game project from dj2 Entertainment, following Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and its impressive box office performance, plus several acquisitions of rights to famous game franchises. The company also signed an overall deal with Amazon earlier this year, and is looking to adapt The Game Awards’ GOTY winner It Takes Two for television and/or film.
Streets of Rage is a classic SEGA-developed side-scroller beat ’em up video game that launched in 1991 and quickly spawned two sequels before being left dormant until French developer and publisher Dotemu struck a deal to develop a fourth installment which was launched in 2020 to great success. It’s not a particularly hard property to turn into a competent action film, but we’ve seen many “simple” video game adaptations fail miserably before, so let’s keep our expectations in check for now.
As mentioned before, Derek Kolstad is one of the hottest names in the business right now as a result of his “quick and effective” writing skills for action-heavy projects — he’s currently tackling an absurd number of big adaptations at the same time, including a live-action take on famous anime Hellsing. Moreover, he wrote a good chunk of Marvel Studios’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney Plus series.
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
