I recently rewatched the newest live-action Mortal Kombat movie, and it got me craving more video game movies that pack a serious punch. Obviously, Street Fighter with Jean Claude Van Damme is a classic, albeit one you need to watch with a pinch of salt, and the Borderlands movie is so terrible that I don’t want to even waste words talking about it. While I love the Mario movie, we’ve not had a truly great live-action video game movie for a while, so when I discovered that a Shinobi movie is on the way with Sam Hargrave at the helm, I actually allowed myself to hope a little… and I mean a little.
If you think Hargrave’s name rings a bell, it’s because he’s the brains behind the Extraction films, the Chris Hemsworth films that feel like you’re on a turbocharged rollercoaster from the moment you turn them on. With Hargrave at the helm (thanks for the info Deadline), there’s a chance that Shinobi could keep us on the edge of our seats just like the first time I played it just like back in the 90s.
Although Joe Mushashi’s character first appeared on the scene in 1987, the first game I played was 1989’s Revenge of Shinobi, although it was at my friend’s house when I was about 7 years old (around 1996). It stuck with me and led to me getting stuck into the back catalogue in the late 90s and I spent far too many hours on Shinobi III, but weirdly we haven’t actually had a Shinobi release since the 2011 3DS release.
It might seem ike an odd time for Sega and Universal to give Adam Siegel, Marc Platt, & Mark Goldberg a call to bring Shinobi back with it being so long since a game released, but Universal struck gold when they brought Mario to the big screen, and with a Streets of Rage movie in the works too, it might mean that we’re entering the era of classic Sega franchises making a comeback.
It’s early days right now and that’s all the information we currently have, but we’d love to know who you’d like to see starring in this movie in the comments section below!
