The King of Fighters (movie)

King of Fighters is the upcoming live-action film for The King of Fighters series. The movie will be directed by action director Gordan Chan ("The Medallion," "Fist of Legend") and the new face screenwriter, Rita Augustine, replaces "Fearless" scriptor Chris Chow.

The film's budget is $12 million. Production is scheduled to end in mid-January and the film is expected to be released in the third quarter of 2009.

Plot
The synopsis released in 2007 is as follows:

"A stylish, high-octane, live action feature based on the highly successful video game franchise, in which the last surviving descendants of three legendary clans are continuously transported to other dimensions to test their martial arts skills against an evil force that seeks to invade and infect the real world."

These notes were added in the December 2 press release:

"As the fighters enter each new world they battle that universe’s native defenders..."

The film's story is predicted to take a sci-fi twist for the series.

Production
Initally, Production was by Axis Entertainment's Joseph Chou (currently producing upcoming "Appleseed: Ex Machina") and Tim Kwok of L.A.-based Convergence Entertainment ("Wicked City".) and would have been jointly financed by Japanese production and rights management group Micott & Basara and Australian-U.S. sales agent Arclight/Easternlight.

After several setbacks, the film is now backed by Inferno Entertainment as an English language, Taiwanese co-production between Double Edge Entertainment, China’s Enlight Media, Japan’s Micott & Basara, the U.S.’ Convergence Entertainment and Axis Entertainment. Inferno will have the licensing rights for international releases. Filming was scheduled to begin in September 2008 but it began in Vancouver, Canada on November 27, 2008.

An news article posted on December 17, 2008 states that this movie is additionally back by the US Inferno Entertainment, the U.K.'s Scion Films, and Singapore's Innoform Media. Micott has rights in Japan and South Korea, Innoform has rights in Singapore and Malaysia, and Inferno takes the rest of the world. Sony has a first-look deal with Inferno for North America.

Cast

 * Maggie Q
 * Sean Faris
 * Will Yun Lee
 * Francoise Yip
 * Monique Ganderton
 * Ray Park
 * David Leitch - also action choreographer