Legendary and Capcom’s upcoming live-action Street Fighter movie might already have a pretty stacked roster of heroes, such as Callina Liang’s (Tell Me Everything) Chun-Li and Andrew Koji’s (Warrior) Ryu, but the film has now found the face of its lead villain, M. Bison, in David Dastmalchian.
Announced via Deadline, this marks the biggest role to date for the 49-year-old actor, best known for his supporting roles in various superhero franchises, including Thomas Schiff in 2008’s The Dark Knight, Kurt and Veb in the Ant-Man franchise, Abra Kadabra in the CW’s The Flash, and Polka-Dot Man in 2021’s The Suicide Squad. Dastmalchian also landed the leading role in the 2023 independent supernatural horror film Late Night with the Devil, playing the charismatic talk show host Jack Delroy.
Although plot details remain under wraps, M. Bison (also known as Vega in Japan) is the main antagonist of numerous Street Fighter games and was first introduced in the 1991 title Street Fighter II: The World Warrior as the final boss of the game. As a would-be world dictator and megalomaniac, M. Bison is a truly evil character, whose ultimate goal is to rule the world’s governments through his Shadaloo crime syndicate.
Dastmalchian’s M. Bison joins the film’s expanding roster of characters including Balrog (rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), Vega (country singer Orville Peck), Blanka (Jason Momoa, Aquaman), Ken (Noah Centineo, The Recruit) and Akuma (WWE superstar Roman Reigns), with the film being helmed by The Eric Andre Show’s Kitao Sakurai.
Dastmalchian also takes over the live-action role from the late Raúl Juliá, who embodied the character in Steven E. de Souza’s 1994 movie adaptation, Street Fighter, which also starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue and Ming-Na Wen, as Guile, Cammy and Chun-Li, respectively. It remains to be seen whether Dastmalchian’s character will take on the same tyrannical version of M. Bison, or if the upcoming film, which is currently delayed indefinitely, will take a different direction altogether.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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