Lionsgate is moving Streets of Rage toward the big screen, with Jeymes Samuel set to direct and Pat Casey and Josh Miller writing the script. The project gives Sega’s bruising arcade franchise its clearest path to film yet, years after earlier adaptation efforts went nowhere.

The new pairing surfaced on Monday, when a trade report identified the creative team behind the adaptation. For readers searching now, the timing matters because Samuel, who directed 2021’s The Harder They Fall, is the latest filmmaker to take a swing at a game that has long seemed built for an action movie but has repeatedly stalled before getting there.

Casey and Miller are no strangers to Sega’s world. They wrote the scripts for the Sonic the Hedgehog films, and their return suggests Lionsgate wants a team that already knows how to turn a game property into a commercial studio feature. Streets of Rage debuted in arcades 35 years ago and became a huge touchstone of the arcade era, with a threadbare story about ex-police officers battling gang lord Mr. X and the original trio of Adam Hunter, Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding.

The franchise has spent much of the past decade in development limbo. Brief talks of a film or television adaptation were reported as far back as 2016, and plans around Streets of Rage and other Sega classics, including Golden Axe and House of the Dead, eventually stalled out before the rights reverted back to Sega. The property was then largely forgotten until 2020 brought another installment, a reminder that the name still carried weight even after years of silence.

What remains unclear is whether this time the momentum holds. No release date, production start or cast has been announced, which leaves the adaptation at the point where many video game projects bog down: a director, a writing team and a familiar title, but not yet the machinery needed to get cameras rolling.