Paramount underneath Skydance‘s possession will not be slowing down, and after making a flurry of offers previously few weeks to recruit the Duffer Brothers, Will Smith, the “Name of Obligation” franchise, and the UFC, Paramount has finalized one other deal, this time with Legendary Leisure to market and distribute movies that Legendary develops and produces.
First up underneath this deal is “Road Fighter,” which is predicated on the Capcom online game and is at the moment in manufacturing. It’s being filmed for IMAX and will likely be launched in theaters October 16, 2026.
Within the broadest sense, the Legendary partnership offers Paramount the flexibility to launch extra motion pictures, push extra issues to theatrical, and construct extra movie franchises. Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, who lead Paramount Photos, stated at a press occasion when the Paramount-Skydance deal lastly closed that they wished to ramp as much as 15 movies a 12 months (its present common is round 11 to 14), and later as many as 20 movies per 12 months. Merging with Skydance was step one at reaching that quantity, however as they internally now prioritize “High Gun 3” and future “Star Trek” motion pictures, Legendary offers it a companion that’s confirmed itself with franchises on an epic scope.
Legendary’s enterprise with Warner Bros. remains to be persevering with. So don’t have any concern about the way forward for “Dune: Half Three” or “Godzilla v. Kong: Supernova,” the previous of which is in manufacturing now and the latter of which WB will launch in 2027. We don’t doubt WB and Legendary will likely be trying to do extra “Minecraft” too after that movie blew up this 12 months. Legendary additionally has the “Enola Holmes” motion pictures at Netflix and has the “Pokemon: Detective Pikachu” rights.
So whereas there’s no main coup to report right here, Legendary was with out an official deal tying them to 1 different studio. The hope is that this deal seems higher for Paramount than it did for Sony, which launched solely a handful of movies underneath the same pact, such because the field workplace flops “The Guide of Clarence” and “The Machine.” On the time we checked out that deal as fairly quaint, however Paramount’s deal additionally contains downstream streaming rights, one thing Sony merely doesn’t have. Paramount+ may use the added enhance.
It additionally speaks considerably to Paramount’s priorities to mine new franchises. “Road Fighter” little question has franchise potential as a online game IP and a transparent rival to “Mortal Kombat” at Warners, and the pact with Activision for a “Name of Obligation” film, no matter that finally ends up trying like, is as large of an IP play as you may get. That stated, the studio does nonetheless have a cope with Damien Chazelle from the prior regime, and one of many new staff’s first offers was to make a splash for a package deal for James Mangold’s subsequent movie reuniting him with Timothée Chalamet, so auteur filmmakers are nonetheless an enormous a part of the pie.
“Road Fighter” is directed by Kitao Sakurai and is ready in 1993 to pay homage to the ’90s roots of the combating arcade recreation. It follows estranged avenue fighters Ryu and Ken, who’re thrown again into fight when the mysterious Chun-Li recruits them for the following World Warrior Event, a battle royale that has a conspiracy brewing behind it. Andrew Koji, Noah Centineo, and Callina Liang star within the movie that additionally contains Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Andrew Schulz, Eric André, Vidyut Jammwal, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and Jason Momoa.