Is Meme Casting a Viable Hollywood Marketing Strategy?

Five years ago, I would have been the last person you’d expect to care about a new “Street Fighter” movie. I had no real connection to the IP, only brief memories of playing the arcade game, and the quality of past films gave me no reason to suspect the franchise held cinematic stories waiting to be told. When Legendary, Capcom, and Paramount announced plans to reboot the franchise, my investment in the project never went beyond professional obligation.

And then the casting announcements began to roll in. Names like Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, and even Jason Momoa seemed like straightforward choices for this kind of property. But as the ensemble cast around them began to take shape, each name left me more confused about what the film‘s vision could possibly be. In Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, you had two of the biggest wrestlers in WWE — hardly the first wrestlers to try their hands at movie stardom, but neither has ever made a dent in Hollywood before. Andrew Schulz is a shock comedian firmly ensconced in the Joe Rogan and Kill Tony universes, while Eric Andre is an Adult Swim legend beloved on the opposite side of the alternative comedy spectrum. Then you add a gay music icon like Orville Peck and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson playing a boxer, and you’re left with chaos.

Cody Rhodes in ‘Street Fighter’Mark Rogers

As the film’s October 17 release date approached, “Street Fighter” was one of my most anticipated movies on the fall calendar. It was pure curiosity, as I couldn’t wrap my head around what an eclectic group of performers could possibly do on the same screen. (I thought “fighting” was a pretty safe bet based on the movie’s title, but there isn’t nearly as much as you might think!) The finished product is a mixed bag with high highs and low lows, but it’s never boring — largely because of the diversity and visible excitement of its cast.

It raises the question: Is meme casting Hollywood’s next great marketing strategy? Endless ink has been spilled about the decline of traditional movie stars and how casting the right celebrities no longer guarantees box office success. For the past decade, most of Hollywood has operated on the assumption that IP is the new movie star— if you have access to the right legacy character, the person wearing the costume is just an added bonus. But we’ve seen diminishing returns even for the most blue-chip IPs… when a new “Star Wars” movie loses to “Obsession” at the box office, you can tell moviegoers are itching for something new.

Jason Momoa in ‘Street Fighter’Courtesy of Paramount Pictures a

In a way, the new “Street Fighter” diverges from both strategies. It’s built around a recognizable IP, but the casting choices are so unique that you can’t help but walk in feeling like you’re going to see something new. You could compare the casting philosophy to a reverse “Expendables,” assembling the strangest possible group of faces that will polarize every audience member to some degree.

While the movie is set in 1993 (with prologues that stretch back to 1987), it does an exceptional job of capturing the absurd feeling of being alive in 2026. At times it almost feels like scrolling through an endless stream of ironic brand collabs with every celebrity under the sun (though the lighting is considerably better). Sometimes it feels like our very existence proves the old idea that postmodernism inevitably gives way to pastiche, and few films have capitalized on that better than “Street Fighter.”

Too many variables are at play to judge the entire “meme casting as marketing” strategy based on the success of “Street Fighter.” It’s still an IP people have preexisting relationships with (for better or worse), and mixed reviews will certainly factor into its success as well. But the film is currently tracking to open as high as $70 million globally this weekend — always an acceptable start for a film budgeted at $82 million. It’s fair to think that the bold casting choices are playing a large role in those numbers.

While we all search for novelty in an increasingly saturated media landscape, the prospect of seeing Orville Peck, 50 Cent, and David Dastmalchian walk into a bar in full anime garb might be even more intriguing to some viewers than watching a new film from Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. That sentence would have sounded like insanity a few decades ago, but in the strange world of Hollywood in the 2020s, weirder might really be better.

A Paramount release, “Street Fighter” is now playing in theaters.