The makers of the Street Fighter reboot would like you to know that they’re open for business in Bangkok, and that they’ve stolen away the star of the Mortal Kombat franchise, Robin Shou. Scoundrels! If you’re interested in following their progress, there’s a production blog with more pics, storyboards, and a defense of the game’s narrative complexity from screenwriter Justin Marks.

Since I was really hard on Marks’s script for Voltron, and have since heard that he’s a very nice young man with a standing vertical leap of thirty-six inches, here’s an excerpt from his comments on the blog sans snarky commentary:

The way I approached the writing of Street Fighter’s script was simple. Throw away everything and start with character. For just a moment, forget about the fights, forget about the costumes, forget about the flaming Hadoukens… go back to the essence of what the characters are about.

See, I think the Street Fighter world is epic. I think it’s got a huge story, and it’s busting at the seams.

But to start, it would be a HUGE mistake to say, “How many characters can we pack into this movie without regard to whether it makes sense?” Think of the X-Men franchise. Think of the way it started with a simple story of Wolverine trying to find a place in the world. And then it spawned an entire universe of amazing characters. If we didn’t keep this movie grounded, we would risk turning Street Fighter into a parody of itself. And to those of us who are fans of fighting franchises, the last thing we want is a movie that doesn’t take itself seriously.

Steven E. de Souza might beg to differ, but I prefer to think of his 1994 Street Fighter as “heightened”. Sometimes, I even throw around the term “masterpiece”. Andrzej Bartkowiak, you have one helluva mountain to scale.

But if a no-bullshit Street Fighter movie is what you’ve been a-clamorin’, bookmark the blog and keep visiting. (And thanks to the site’s administrator, Aaron Horowitz, for the heads-up.)