Streets of Rage movie coming from the Sonic writers and Hunger Games studio

The Streets of Rage film just got a new pair of writers and an award-winning director

It seems Streets of Rage will finally be making its way to the big screen. Lionsgate announced that the long-in-development film adaptation has found its main crew. Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who wrote all three Sonic the Hedgehog films, will handle the new screenplay. Jeymes Samuel, who helmed the award-winning western The Harder They Fall and biblical comedy The Book of Clarence, will direct.

“We and our partners at SEGA knew that Streets of Rage demanded a bold filmmaker,” Erin Westerman, president of Lionsgate's Motion Picture Group, said in a statement. “Jeymes Samuel’s visceral and explosive style—not to mention his signature use of unforgettable music—is perfect for audiences both familiar with and new to the series. We are so excited for how he will bring his own memorable take to this beloved video game IP.”

The film will be produced by SEGA’s Toru Nakahara, Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy I. Stevenson, and Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Tony Shaw. Derek Kolstad (John Wick), who wrote an earlier draft of the movie announced four years ago, will also produce.

Streets of Rage is an acclaimed beat ’em up series that launched on the Sega Genesis in 1991. It follows former cops as they battle the infamous crime lord Mr. X. Beyond its satisfying fisticuffs, the series is particularly known for its influential electronic dance soundtracks. It would receive three direct sequels, with the most recent entry, Streets of Rage 4, released after a 25-year gap. The game received positive reviews and sold more than 2.5 million copies.

While film adaptations of video games have long been at the bottom of the Hollywood totem pole, a recent string of commercial successes has turned that around. Despite poor reviews, Five Nights At Freddy’s and A Minecraft Movie were two of the biggest box office surprises of their respective years. Similarly, the longstanding rivals Mario and Sonic have also impressed on the big screen: the former has made a whopping 2 billion across a duo of movies (for context, this puts it in the top ten highest-grossing film series of all time), while the trio of Sonic movies has crossed 1 billion. With the film industry struggling, producers are clearly looking for new sources of inspiration; the most recent example is how The Backrooms turned a 4chan post into a massively profitable horror film. As long as these video game adaptations continue to do so well, it’s probably fair to assume they will keep getting announced.