Cody Rhodes’ role in Street Fighter apparently grew far beyond what was originally planned, and now one of his co-stars has revealed just how much footage never made the final cut.
Speaking with ClutchPoints, Andrew Schulz revealed that he, Rhodes and Noah Centineo improvised so much while filming one of their scenes that the production ended up with around four hours of unused footage.
According to Schulz, the scene featured his character, Dan Hibiki, trying to get under Guile’s skin while Cody Rhodes’ Guile traded insults with Centineo’s Ken. What was supposed to be a relatively quick sequence kept growing after director Kitao Sakurai and producer Cale Boyter realized the three actors had great chemistry together.
“It’s this weird thing, ’cause I’m kind of trying to tease Cody, and then Cody’s teasing Ken (Centineo), and then Ken is just caught in the middle of his mayhem. And credit to Kitao, the director, and Cale, the producer; they just let us shoot. That day was not supposed to be as long as it was, but we found something cool with the chemistry there.”
Schulz said the cast kept experimenting with different jokes and interactions until they had piled up roughly four hours of material that ultimately couldn’t fit into the movie. He added that he’d love to see some of those outtakes released one day.
Rhodes admitted there was a point where everyone simply ran out of ideas after improvising for so long. One of the last insults he came up with was calling Ken “Pee-Pee Hair,” something he couldn’t even say without laughing.
“I saw one; I think my bandwidth had been fully stretched. There’s these really creative, clever ones [where] you’re nailing it; you think you’re killing it—but then at one point, I think I called Ken ‘Pee-Pee Hair.’ That’s where you had to know, ‘Hey, he’s out of them.’”
Schulz remembered the moment just as vividly, saying Rhodes immediately broke character after delivering the line, causing everyone on set to crack up.
“He just looks at him and goes, ‘Hey there, Pee-Pee Hair.’ And then he tries to hold it and just breaks, and we all break [character].”
Rhodes added that one thing that helped throughout the process was having Capcom representatives on set. Whenever the cast pushed the improvisation a little too far, they could look over to the people behind the Street Fighter franchise to make sure they were still staying true to the characters.
It sounds like the cast had far more material than the finished movie could ever use. Whether those outtakes ever see the light of day remains to be seen, but after hearing about four hours of improvised scenes, fans will probably be hoping they eventually end up in a blooper reel or special features.
Would you like to see the unused Street Fighter footage featuring Cody Rhodes released after the movie comes out? Let us know in the comments below.
