Capcom Lays Down Cash for Upcoming Movie

With a revamped Street Fighter II tearing up the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, a brand new Street Fighter IV coming next month, and a slew of other games and properties doing well/in the pipeline, Capcom finds itself in a strong position and has a little bit of money to throw around.

Well, make that a lot of money.

According to an interview with Capcom's Investor Relations department, the publisher is throwing some serious coin on the table for the Lost Planet movie. While money is flowing in from several outlets, Capcom is doing its part to ensure the movie is well funded, which will (hopefully) translate in a well-received motion picture.

Toshihiro Tokumaru, the man in charge of Capcom’s "Character Contents Business", says Lost Planet will have a total budget of at least $150, and that number may actually grow to $200 million. To put that in perspective, the movie adaptation of Doom cost around $70 million to make, and Transformers, the very definition of a "summer blockbuster", had a budget of approximately $151 million. Also, as if money wasn't enough (it rarely is), the producer on the project is none other than Avi Arad, the producer behind Iron Man.

So what's spurring Capcom to be so adventurous with games-turned-movies? "I think that it is because of our original IPs that we are able to try something so ambitious," said Tokumaru. "When the game creators at Capcom develop a game, they think about everything from the main characters to the setting, which makes it easy to bring our games to the big screen. In game-making, we consider the main character's upbringing, interpersonal relationships, and their place in time. But in a game we can only show a cross-section of that. In Lost Planet for example, we can show the game's protagonist on a distant planet fighting against various foes, but we can't really show his interpersonal relationships. By developing that part of it on the movie screen, we can add substance to that world and expand it."

Tokumaru business philosophy is "one property with multiple business uses". This is why Capcom games often make it to the big screen. From Street Fighter to Lost Planet to Resident Evil, Capcom is looking to become a major player in Hollywood.

Check out the entire Capcom interview here.