Street fighter Reunion!

"Street Fighter Reunion" is fully developed and ready to go immediately into pre-production... and has been for the past two years! Seems that, successively, every single time we'd almost obtained the funding for our first season, we'd gotten closer to it happening than at every previous time. This last time was almost a sure thing. So much so that our line producer and I interviewed some banks and chose one with whom to open an account under a new LLC specifically for this production. We'd made all the arrangements for the transfer of funds and, when it was time for the broker's investor's attorneys to provide the necessary paperwork to both our bank and to our production staff, they backpedaled and delayed the transaction again and again until it eventually became clear that they could not produce a POF document (which, of course, they'd never admit). The whole crew, and especially the cast, were all excited to finally be getting this thing shot this summer which is our deadline because we have many outdoor scenes to be shot with the Street Fighters in their traditional costumes (and some 21st century updates on some of them since we are the only Street Fighter entity whose story takes place in the present) and we didn't want to have to shoot those in the bloody cold again as we had to before (my nude scene as Zangief had him naked on a rooftop in Brooklyn with an air temperature of 52 degrees). Having the rug pulled out from beneath us AGAIN was indeed disheartening for us.

We next attempted to get the funding from investors from Japan but that fell through because they were interested in equitable real estate in exchange for money which our location manager (who deals in such matters) didn't have readily available to them in time to close the deal.

We are still looking mainly at smaller pools of younger (and hipper) venture capital investors who are sharp enough to see the value in doing a spin-off of such a popular hit series and, since the "tectonic shift" that happened to the television landscape between June and November of '09, it's been decided to make the new series both a television and web series, each version to be cut and distributed for its respective medium.

The Fox network have wanted SFR from the outset but wanted to own it outright. NBC was interested but the producer and casting director involved wanted to recast the show with A-list TV actors and make the characters younger (which would have made it just a live action Street Fighter show that has nothing to do with the stars of the original hit series reuniting for new action, adventure and comedy).

Although I've been appearing in so many commercials (the Mohawk temporarily gone) doing guest appearances on other series and even starring in a new superhero action adventure science fiction drama, "Major Ursus", we are still fighting every day to get Street Fighter Reunion fully funded and in production for all of you. IT WILL HAPPEN if only because we absolutely will not stop pushing this project until we make it a reality. The scripts are funny and exciting and hold lots of surprises all the way up to the first season's finale at which point there will be several cool shockers for you. The truly titanic battle between Akuma and Zangief in Episode 5 alone is reason enough to do this series, especially when you consider that we are pulling out all the stops for that one. It will also cement a new relationship between The Red Cyclone and his former boss, M. Bison. We're very excited about this subplot as well as with the others.

It took Gene Roddenberry four years to get funding for a Star Trek feature film, this right on the heels of their first Emmy Award from their 1974 season (the animated series with the original cast). It took Dan Curtis two years to finally get the funding for a Dark Shadows feature film which should have been a no-brainer because it was (and still is) the biggest daytime television series of all time.

For a while "Street Fighter: The Later Years" was the biggest web series of all time and was even nominated Best Series at the 2008 YouTube Awards. CHTV, trying to wash its hands of its constant association with Street Fighter when it really is supposed to be a network for a much more vast variety of its own comedy videos, was alienating its own fan base by continuing the series. Yes, the rest of the world loved it but their own fan base demanded that they end the series and move on to other things (which is what they were there to do anyway). This is probably why they did not respond to several offers for everything from a continuation of the series to a full fledged TV show and even a feature film! We (the cast) were certain, on that final day on the set, that our sad good-byes were only temporary since we'd be back on the set again for new shows within probably just a few months. It broke some of our hearts that it wasn't going to happen after all. Enter TJ Glenn and me. We're both seasoned comedy writers who were doing this stuff about a decade before most of the staff of CHTV were even born! Working alongside TJ (Vega) who is, himself, a best selling author, enabled us to tie up a lot of loose ends in the SF:TLY story line and move the characters into an entirely new direction now that "Later Years" had successfully accomplished its two main objectives of premise: answering the "Where are they now?" running gag of our first season and the "Can the Street Fighters make their comeback from retirement without being killed?" plot line of our second season. We start our series knowing that the Street Fighters have successfully returned to the fighting circuit and create brand new adventures for all of them with hilarious consequences, of course. Contrary to what much of the media had expected from "Reunion", we are not a continuation of post retirement jokes and in-jokes based on the game itself. For an extended series like ours to work at all, TJ and I knew we would have to make the humor a lot more broad and focus the laughs more so on the characters themselves and their relationships to each other, which is where TJ and I always thought the real jokes were all along. We believe we've certainly accomplished this in the new scripts.

Hang in there, gang! we will not drop this torch. Somehow, we will make "Street Fighter Reunion" a fun and exciting (albeit delayed) reality.