Street Fighter Ends With an Unexpected Song Choice

The 2026 live-action Street Fighter film closes with The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men,” a late-added musical choice director Kitao Sakurai says was meant to match the movie’s deliberately irreverent tone. Sakurai said the song emerged during editing, after the cast sang it as a joke while the filmmakers were searching for music for a scene after the climax. The team set the performance to the track, he said, and decided it worked. Sakurai described the moment between Ken and Ryu as sincere, while the unexpected song made for an intentionally strange ending. His account of how the choice was made comes from an interview and was not independently corroborated in the reports reviewed. Music is prominent throughout the film, which draws heavily on songs from the 1990s, the period in which much of the story is set, while also using tracks from other decades. Among the featured songs are Tupac’s “Ambitionz Az a Ridah,” Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch” and 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” The film also uses 50 Cent’s “Many Men Wish Death” during a fight involving Balrog, played by 50 Cent. The soundtrack includes an original score by Leo Birenberg and Zach...