14 DAY TRIAL // Hollywood is slowly but surely making its presence felt in the gaming industry, either via companies promoting their games with celebrities, or by selling the big movie studios the rights to some popular Intellectual Properties, in order for them to adapt them for the silver screen.
That is how Capcom has recently dealt with the rights to its very successful Street Fighter franchise of fighting games, as the newest movie in the series, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li has hit theaters across the world. But while it wasn't well received by critics, it seems that Capcom itself is quite proud of it.
The company’s senior director of corporate communications, Chris Kramer, recently talked to GameDaily, saying that the gaming corporation was very pleased with how The Legend of Chun Li turned out, from a financial point of view, as he compared it to the first Street Fighter film, which featured Jean Claude Van Damme, and wasn't well receive by fans or critics, but which is still making a lot of money for the company in the form of royalties and copyrights.
“Critics were unkind to the first Street Fighter movie as well, but that film has been ridiculously profitable for Capcom over the last decade. The original SF movie still generates millions of dollars in royalties for Capcom every year, thanks to cable, foreign distribution, home video, DVD and Blu-ray sales. And Capcom would be receiving even more money if that had been a co-production deal!”
Kramer went on to say that his company would adopt the Marvel-way of making movies based on existing IPs, as the comic book giant saw a lot of success with the films it has made with its famous characters. Also, the upcoming movies Onimusha, Clock Tower and Lost Planet will also be co-produced by Capcom in order to ensure maximum profitability.
It definitely seems that the Japanese company is really bent on making a lot of money recently, as it has also partnered with credit card maker Visa in order to make some limited editions for fans, and won't really feel the recession that other companies have already taken a suffering from.