With the popularity of vampires and werewolves at an all-time high, thanks to Underworld, True Blood, Vampire Dairies and Twilight, why does CAPCOM’s 1990’s 2-D fighting game series, Darkstalkers not have a movie franchise of it’s own?
One would think that with the pop culture phenomenon perpetrated by the likes of Selene, Edward, Eric Northman that Hollywood—who is always looking for new source material—would consider giving a venerable 2-D fighting franchise such as DarkStalkers a modern-day facelift and—pardon the pun—breathe new life into a series that has all been left for dead.
To those who never had the chance to play DarkStalkers or any of it’s sequels, Darkstalkers : The Night Warriors, Night Warriors : Darkstalkers Revenge, Darkstalkers III and the recent 2013 high-definition remake, Darkstalkers Resurrection, and the anime series Night Warriors : Darkstalkers’ Revenge, should do themselves a favor and experience a truly immerse style of gameplay complimented by beautiful 2-D sprites and a colorful cast of characters ranging from a hulky vampire(Demitri Maximoff), a dead samurai(Bishamon) to a vampire succubus(Morrigan Aensland)
Other characters in the Darkstalkers universe include :
- Jon Talbain(werewolf)
- Felicia (cat demon)
- Anakaris(mummy)
- Huitzil(robot)
- Sasquatch (Bigfoot)
- Rikuo(merman)
- Victor von Gerdenheim(Frankenstein)
- Donovan Baine(a handsome half human/half vampire who could be played by Thor’s Liam Hensworth)
- Hsien-Ko(Chinese vampire/zombie)
- Jedah Dohma(demon)
- Lilith(succubus, Morrgian’s sister?)
As a life-long otaku(anime fan boy) and CAPCOM video-gamer, as Street Fighter runs thru my blood, this writer sees so much potential for a Twilight/Underworld/True Blood-like blockbuster franchise, based on the depth of story that covers various eras in history.
Off the top of my head alone, this writer can envision a cast heading by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers(Dracula, The Tudors) as Demitri, Karen Gillan(Guardians Of The Galaxy) as Morrigan(plus she’s a Scot!) and Joe Manganiello as Jon Talbain would be a promising start. Throw in Dakota Fanning(Man On Fire, Twilight) as Lilith and Jennifer Lawrence (X-Men, The Hunger Games) as Felicia and this hypothetical Darkstalkers franchise would be formidable.
While this may or may not ever come to fruition, this wouldn’t be the first movie franchise for the Osaka, Japan-based CAPCOM—as Milla Jovovich stars in the Resident Evil movie franchise. Another idea that CAPCOM could—as a way to link to a potential Street Fighter franchise—is have cameos made Akuma(who could be played by Ken Watanbe(The Last Samurai, Batman Begins), Dhalsim played by Dev Patel(Slumdog Millionaire, The Newsroom and The Last Airbender) and a CGI-rendered Blanka would add to the depth of the franchise as well as some exciting new characters in a new 3-D fighting game revival, à la Street Fighter IV.
Thanks to their very successful movie franchises such as The X-Men, The Avengers, Spider-Man and Iron Man, CAPCOM would be wise to allow Marvel to produce and have full movie rights, as they have cornered the market in comic-book fandom.
Once again, if a proverbial Darkstalkers movie franchise were to get green lit, this is how this writer would go about doing it, one can only hope and dream, right?