Street Fighter Tops the Box Office With $51 Million Opening Weekend Amid Lackluster Reviews

Capcom’s Street Fighter movie spun up $51.1 million in its opening weekend, securing its place atop the global box office despite some not-so-great reviews.

Ryu (Andrew Koji), Ken (Noah Centineo), and the rest of the film’s massive cast grappled with an estimated $31 million domestically and $20.1 million internationally in its theatrical debut. That’s a figure that landed it a comfortable first place worldwide, even if it’s not a perfect victory across the board.

As audiences turned up for performances – including Callina Liang’s Chun-Li, David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison, and Jason Momoa’s Blanka – not everyone was so happy with how director Kitao Sakurai brought Capcom’s classic fighting game franchise to the big screen. In its first few days in the public’s gaze, Street Fighter has amassed a critics’ score of 44 on IMDb and 41% on Rotten Tomatoes. IGN gave it a 6/10.

That’s serviceable as far as gaming adaptations go and sub-par in the grand scheme. Generally, fans are feeling pretty positive about what they’ve seen thanks to some crisp animation and fight sequences. “Dumb fun” is one phrase floating around for the film, which doesn’t seem to be for everyone but has still pulled in 79% positivity from audiences, according to Rotten Tomatoes.

For comparison (and because Street Fighter actor Andrew Schulz has it on everyone’s minds), the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie earned $22.5 million domestically in its post-lockdown-era debut. Mortal Kombat 2, which continued that story earlier this year, opened to $63 million globally, coming in second place behind The Devil Wears Prada 2.

That gives Mortal Kombat the edge over its Capcom competitor in terms of direct box office performance worldwide as the teams behind both projects tease ideas for a crossover. The real test for Street Fighter will be its performance in the weeks ahead. Paramount, Legendary, and Capcom made the adaptation with a production budget of $82 million, according to Deadline. We’re not quite at that number yet, and if word of those bad reviews spreads too far, the video game movie’s fight for a sequel might be more of an uphill battle than expected.

While Street Fighter takes the top box office spot, also in theaters this weekend is Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything. A mind-bending look into the life of controversial Theranos creator Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, the dark-comedy documentary has enraptured moviegoers with $15 million domestically.

That’s a number that puts it well below the wide appeal garnered by Street Fighter, but considering the three-hour Fielder doc opened to just 855 theaters compared to the video game movie’s 3,575, it’s hard not to see You Can See Everything as a more impressive success story. Its production budget reportedly totaled less than $10 million, with its marketing budget also said to be around that same number.

Reviews for the movie are showing incredible positivity, too, with movie reviewer social media platform Letterboxd boasting that You Can See Everything quickly emerged as its highest-rated feature film. IGN’s review returned a “Masterpiece” rating of 10/10. We called it “a jaw-dropping, intimate investigative doc” that “finds TV host Nathan Fielder searching the deep-blue eyes of Silicon Valley scammer Elizabeth Holmes for mysterious answers.”

Fielder’s latest is only available as a limited release for now. The plan is for it to get a much wider release in the near future, with one Deadline source saying, “Who knows where this will go.”

Elsewhere in theaters, moviegoers have had the opportunity to watch two Capcom adaptations as Resident Evil continues its successful run. While star Austin Abrams rides that wave of success, his other picture, Whalefall, which debuted this weekend, only managed to wash up $17.5 million on its $60 million budget.

For more on Street Fighter, you can read why we think it makes a mistake that Mortal Kombat already learned from. You can also see our breakdown of its ending and our list of the best movies of the year.