Sci-Fi Action Movie Based On Obscure Sega Game Could Be The Next Hit Adaptation

Skydance recently announced they are working hard on an Eternal Champions movie. The company tapped Jurassic World scribe Derek Connolly to write a live-action adaptation of the obscure 1993 fighting game. Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger will produce the film with help from Sega’s Toru Nakahara.

Eternal Champions tells the tale of nine combatants from throughout history. A mysterious entity known as the “Eternal Champion” plucks the warriors from their respective timelines moments before death. His reasoning? The nine fighters all have the capacity to change the future of mankind for the better.

Unfortunately, the Champion can only change the destiny of one character. The rest will be sent back to their original timelines to die. Obviously, the only fair way to determine who gets to stay is a martial arts tournament!

One thing separated Eternal Champions from the other bazillion fighting games of the era: the game’s rich story and complex characters. It may not be Shakespeare, but Eternal Champions has a deeper, more interesting story than its fellow brawlers. All of the other one-on-one fighting games, with the exception of Mortal Kombat, had characters that essentially boiled down to “I’m a martial artist who likes beating up other martial artists.”

Eternal Champions, however, was different. It featured characters like Midnight, a British biochemist hired by the U.S. during Vietnam to poison Viet Kong water supplies in 1967. Exposure to the chemical turns him into a mutant vampire creature who was later killed by a vampire hunter while trying to find a cure.

There was Slash, a caveman from 50,000 B.C. who was killed by his tribe for being too smart, and Blade, a Syrian bounty hunter from 2030, who died while trying to retrieve a lethal virus from a terrorist. Eternal Champions‘ roster had it all—medieval alchemists, futuristic cyborg kick-boxers, and even 19th-century Russian aristocrats posing as circus performers. Again, it’s not War and Peace, but there’s more than enough for an entertaining sci-fi action banger.

Other publications have treated the news of an Eternal Champions movie as proof that Hollywood is “scraping the bottom of the barrel” regarding video game adaptations. The reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not only is Eternal Champions the perfect choice for a movie, but its relative obscurity could also work in its favor.

Much of the initial complaints about the recent Borderlands movie stemmed from its lack of faithfulness to the source material. With Eternal Champions, on the other hand, no one is going to care how accurate the movie is. Since no one remembers the game, no one will care how faithfully it’s adapted.

It’s a lot like Guardians of the Galaxy. James Gunn’s MCU trilogy is not faithful to the original comics. Gunn takes liberties with the source material every chance he gets.

And yet, the GOTG films are some of the most beloved Marvel movies. Why? No one knew what a Guardian of the Galaxy was before the films.

Since no one knows what an “Eternal Champion” is, Skydance has the freedom to make any kind of movie they want. The source material certainly has the potential to be one of the best video game adaptations out there.