Tekken 6 producer slams Tekken movie

Game players often bemoan seeing their favorite franchises turned into feature film failures, but it's not so common to hear the game makers themselves griping about such adaptations. That's not stopping Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada from weighing in on Crystal Sky Pictures' live-action Tekken film as it launches on Blu-ray and DVD in Japanese stores this week. When asked by a fan about a character's motivations in the film, Harada responded bluntly on his English-language Twitter feed.

"That Hollywood movie is terrible," Harada said. "We were not able to supervise that movie. (It was [a] cruel contract.)"

When another user called the film "a disaster" and implored Harada to prevent another such abuse of the franchise, the producer put his virtual foot down.

"Please don't ask me about that movie," Harada wrote. "We did not have the supervision right. I don't want [to] talk about that."

The Tekken film had been in the works since 2002, when production company Crystal Sky picked up the rights to it for a reported $60 million. After lying dormant for years, the project resurfaced in 2007, with director Dwight Little (Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home) at the helm.

The film features a number of familiar faces, including Cary-Hiroyuki Takagawa (who played Shang Tsung in the original Mortal Kombat) and Lateef Crowder (who played Baraka in the recent Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short). It also stars Gary Daniel, who has no apparent connection to Mortal Kombat but did star as Kenshiro in the live-action film based on the similarly violent Fist of the North Star.

Inquiries to Crystal Sky about North American distribution plans for the film were not returned as of press time.