Owner of a rich portfolio of video games, SEGA has decided to bet on a little-known series to cover its next project for cinemas. According to The Hollywood Reporterthe company has begun production on an adaptation of ‘Eternal Champions‘, a fighting video game that came to Mega Drive in 1993. The specialized media claims that the film will adopt a format of live action and will feature a script by Derek Connolly. The writer, highly sought after in Hollywood, has worked on films such as ‘Detective Pikachu’, ‘Kong: Skull Island’, the ‘Jurassic World’ trilogy and collaborated on the script for ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’.
Fight of champions from different eras
The responsibility of bringing the adaptation of ‘Eternal Champions’ to a successful conclusion will be of Skydance and the adaptation is expected to be released once the company’s merger with Paramount Global is complete. In the meantime, production will be handled by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger, with Toru Nakahara, who has already worked as a representative of SEGA on the ‘Sonic’ films.
Developed for the Mega Drive, ‘Eternal Champions’ hit stores in a period marked by fighting games like ‘Street Fighter II’ and ‘Mortal Kombat’. Taking advantage of the popularity of a genre that was in full swing, its creators decided to bring together characters from different periods of history and put them to fight in a tournament to decide which one deserved to be resurrected.
The destiny of humanity
The game’s plot revolves around the “Eternal Champion”, an omniscient being who warns of the extinction of humanity as a result of the death of a key person in history. The Eternal Champion will use his power to temporarily rescue the souls of each character just before they die, but he only has the ability to resurrect one of them permanently. To decide this, a fighting tournament is held to see which of the fighters is able to defeat the rest and regain their life, while restoring the balance of humanity.
One of its peculiarities was that among the supporting cast there was no villain or evil figure. All the characters, including a 1920s Chicago robber, a vampire living in Vietnam in 1967, an American cybernetic kickboxer from 2345 AD, a hunter from 50,000 BC and an alchemy student from the 1690s killed during the Salem trials, They were chosen for their ability to do good and ensure the safety of humans..
The game even received an updated version for the SEGA MEGA CD, an adaptation for the Tiger handheld, a sequel and two spin-offs. However, the third game in the series was cancelled as a result of the heated disputes that arose between the company’s North American and Japanese divisions, something that ultimately also ended up marking the end of the franchise.
More adaptations confirmed
‘Eternal Champions’ thus joins the numerous SEGA franchises that currently have confirmed adaptations to other media. For example, films based on ‘Comix Zone‘, ‘Space Channel 5‘ and ‘Streets of Rage‘, while the premiere of a six-episode live-action series based on ‘ is awaitedLike a Dragon: Yazuza‘, which will arrive on Prime Video. The first three episodes will be released on October 25 and the last three will be available from November 1.