Hey, remember the classic SEGA fighting game Eternal Champions? First released in 1993 on the SEGA Genesis, earning mixed reviews and spawning one sequel and two critically panned spin-off games? …No? Oh well, Jurassic World writer Derek Connolly apparently does. According to a report by the Hollywood Reporter, Connolly has been chosen to write a live-action adaptation of the fighting game for Skydance Media, an American media company based in Santa Monica, California.
Eternal Champions’ plot is meatier than you might think for a fighting game. The playable fighters are all noble “heroes” from various periods of human history who died before they could change the world for the better. An omniscient character called the Eternal Champion has plucked them from just before their deaths and has them duke it out to determine which one of them is most worthy to escape their fate. Each character has a pretty cool backstory that could easily make for an eventful movie; some notable examples are Blade, a Syrian bounty hunter from 2030, Xavier, an alchemy student accused of witchcraft in 1692, and Slash, a prehistoric hunter from 50,000 BC. Though details on the project are sparse, we can only hope that the end product is better than the terrible 1995 Mortal Kombat movie.
Derek Connolly is also credited for writing work on 2019’s Detective Pikachu, and the unreleased Legend of Zelda live-action movie.
About the Author
Edie W-K
she/her
If it isn't video games, Edie doesn't care about it. She's been playing games since the N64 era, and only spent enough time away from her 3DS to earn a Bachelor in Games Design from RMIT.
