Video game film adaptations used to be huge flops. Now studios can’t get enough

Imdb In the early 1990s, when the home video game market was still in its infancy, Hollywood attempted to leverage the appeal of this emerging entertainment for feature length films.

The resulting movies – including Super Mario Bros. (1993), Mortal Kombat (1995), and the Jean Claude Van Damme-starring Street Fighter (1994) – largely bombed in their critical reception .

Today, however, video game to film adaptations are filling multiplexes, from blockbusters such as A Minecraft Movie (2025), to elevated horrors such as the recent Resident Evil (2026) film, and lower-budget breakouts like Iron Lung (2026).

As Street Fighter swing-kicks its way back into cinemas, it’s worth looking at how, and why, the video game-to-film pipeline has started gushing anew.

Cross-generational appeal Film studios favour projects that will simultaneously appeal to younger and older audiences.

This explains why there are so many live action Disney remakes.

The current video game film adaptation trend kicked off around 2020 – made possible by a cross-generational audience that didn’t exist a few decades ago.

The 1994 Street Fighter film was distributed in US cinemas just a few years after the first game arrived on home consoles.

The latest adaptation, on the other hand, will appeal to generations of fans familiar with characters like Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li.

Media commentator Patrick Metzger’s concept of the “ nostalgia pendulum ” describes how pop culture regularly revives trends from about 30 years earlier.

The new Street Fighter film leans heavily into 90s nostalgia.

Set in 1993, it invoked touchstones such as Jolt Cola , MTV, and era-defining music like Tupac Shakur’s track Ambitionz Az a Ridah.

Cultural legitimacy The fact these video game have stood the test of time has also earned them cultural legitimacy.

In the early 90s, video games were treated as a comparative novelty.