The freshly-minted genre icon will play villain M. Bison in the upcoming video game adaptation.
David Dastmalchian has racked up an impressive number of iconic roles in a relatively short span of time. Since making his screen debut as the Joker’s creepy henchman in 2008’s The Dark Knight, he’s become a familiar face to genre fans. Creepy suspected child killer, creepy mentat, creepy talk show host – Dastmalchian can do it all! And to that illustrious list we can now add “creepy dictator and martial artist” as the Murderbot star has signed on to play creepy main villain M. Bison in the upcoming live action reboot of Street Fighter.
Just kidding – by all accounts and judging by every interview he’s ever given, Dastmalchian is a lovely dude. He is great at playing creeps, though, and he is playing M. Bison for director Kitao Sakurai (Netflix’s Bad Trip).
The news comes to us from Deadline, who point out that reps at studio Legendary declined to comment, but they seem supremely confident in their scoop.
Street Fighter was previously filmed in 1994, with a height-of-his-fame Jean-Claude Van Damme as Colonel Guile; Kylie Minogue, of all people, as Cammy; and a magnificent Raul Julia in his final role as M. Bison. Pilloried at the time and bombing at the box office, the film is now regarded as a camp classic. Julia, clearly ill, leaving it all out on the field as the ostentatious villain is worth the price of admission alone. But it’s understandable that audiences of the time, expecting a hard-hitting martial arts movie, didn’t know what to make of writer and director Steven E. de Souza’s winking, OTT epic.
While it’s a safe bet that the new Street Fighter will take itself much more seriously, it’s pulling together a singularly wild cast. According to various reports floating around the traps, we’re looking at:
- Warrior’s Andrew Koji as Ryu.
- Noah Centineo as Ken.
- Jason Momoa as Blanka.
- Roman Reigns as Akuma.
- Queer cowboy sensation Orville Peck as Vega, and we did not see that one coming.
- Eric André as an announcer.
- Callina Liang as Chun-Li.
- Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki.
- 50 Cent as Balrog.
- Cody Rhodes as Guile.
There’s a certain irony that Vega, a character previously played by Native American actor Jay Tavare, is now being played by a cowboy. Also, we almost got Walton Goggins as Bison, would which would have brought a whole different energy to the proceedings.
There’s no hint of a release date yet, but we are definitely intrigued.
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