Kitao Sakurai Designed Every “Street Fighter” Fight With Jon Valera From the Storyboard Stage
- Kitao Sakurai designed all of “Street Fighter’s” action with second unit director and stunt coordinator Jon Valera.
- Each fight was given its own setting, look and story reason, so every matchup got separate choreography.
- The film credits about seventy stunt performers and riggers, with doubles cast for each principal.
Posted: October 2, 2026
Kitao Sakurai sat down with the Korean outlet Cineplay on October 2 and gave the clearest account yet of how Street Fighter's action was actually built — and the answer is that it was built by the action department from the storyboard stage, not handed to it after the fact. Sakurai names Jon Valera, the picture's second unit director and stunt coordinator, as his design partner: “We worked closely together from the storyboarding process, which took place in several stages, and designed all the action as a team.” On a game adaptation that is the whole job, because every signature move has to survive translation into something a performer can execute, repeat and be covered on.
The design rule Sakurai describes is one fight, one world. “Each fight also had to be different. Every action sequence needed its own world, a clear aesthetic concept and a narrative reason for why the fight was happening.” That pushes the load onto the coordinator in a specific way: separate choreographic vocabularies per matchup rather than one house style reused across the picture, each with its own environment, lighting condition and camera approach to rehearse and reset against. Sakurai singles out the Honda steam-room sequence — Ryu moving through darkness and steam before emerging into light — which is a visibility and continuity problem as much as a choreography one: atmospheric haze that has to be matched take to take while performers work contact beats in it.
The volume is the other number worth noting. Sakurai says the film carries “more fights than John Wick” and is “packed with action from beginning to end,” with the stated aim of bringing specific techniques from the game to life as practical action. The stunt department behind that is deep — Philip Partridge as stunt coordinator, Anthony Rinna as fight coordinator, Valera on second unit and stunts, with roughly seventy stunt performers and riggers credited and doubles cast per principal. Principal photography ran August 18 to November 12, 2025 in Australia. In cinemas October 16, 2026.
Learn more on IMDb: Street Fighter (2026) · Jon Valera · Anthony Rinna
