Thanks to the relative tolerability of the Sonic The Hedgehog movie, Sega is apparently feeling some extra confidence when it comes to video game movies. Unfortunately, it’s not using that confidence to do something fun and silly like live-action Altered Beast or Comix Zone movies, but rather it’s taking a more obvious route and moving forward with a movie based on one of its most movie-friendly video game brands: Yakuza.
This comes from Variety, which says Sega is working with 1212 Entertainment and Wild Sheep Content (the former had a hand in Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and the latter comes from a former Netflix exec) on the Yakuza movie, with the producers currently looking for someone to write the script. For those who don’t know Yakuza, it’s a long-running series of RPG/action games that traditionally focus on a dude named Kazuma Kiryu who does various things in the world of Japanese organized crime that often devolve into over-the-top street fights.
That being said, a Yakuza movie that’s just a Japanese crime drama would be like someone making a Grand Theft Auto movie that’s primarily about racing cars. Sure it’s part of the game, but it’s not the point of the game. In Yakuza, one could argue that the point is often the things you’re doing that don’t involve getting your hands dirty in the Japanese underworld, as Kiryu also happens to be a big fan of doing karaoke and playing Hang-On or other Sega arcade classics in a big arcade. A Yakuza movie that doesn’t dedicate at least 20 minutes to karaoke and Hang-On (or Out Run or Space Harrier) can hardly consider itself a faithful adaptation.