WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — Born in Japan, filmmaker Kitao Sakurai moved to Cleveland Heights at age 3 and grew up acting in productions by Northeast Ohio theater companies, from Cleveland Heights’ own Dobama Theatre to the Cleveland Play House to the city’s Great Lakes Theater. (He played Tiny Tim in one of the latter’s annual productions of “A Christmas Carol.”)

However, he spent much of his free time in front of one very specific movie screen.

“I was a regular Cinematheque head,” Sakurai says during a recent interview at a Cleveland hotel. “I, like, lived at the Cinematheque.”

Sakurai is back in Northeast Ohio this morning, in fact, to attend an event in the evening at the Cleveland Institute of Art’s cinema facility, which, he says, is exciting for him.

And it’s probably fair to say the film that will be screened — Sakurai’s“Street Fighter,” a fresh adaptation of the long-running video game franchise — isn’t exactly what you’d consider the Cinematheque’s typical arthouse fare. Directed and co-written by the graduate of Northeast Ohio’s University School, the recently released flick distributed by Paramount Pictures is an over-the-top and violent adventure that takes itself only so seriously.

Although he produced and directed the first two episodes of the Prime Video spy thriller series “Butterfly” and the pilot episode for the Peacock post-apocalyptic action comedy “Twisted Metal,” another video game adaptation, Sakurai has devoted much of his energy to making comedic fare. He directed five installments of the FXX sitcom “Dave” and co-directed every episode of the absolutely wild late-night-talk-show parody “The Eric André Show.” He also helmed the 2021 prank-comedy movie “Bad Trip,” which starred good buddy André.

“I met Eric when we were in our early 20s in New York and were both totally outside of the industry,” says Sakurai, who’d long wanted to be a filmmaker. “I was shooting low-budget music videos, and Eric was a struggling stand-up comedian.

“Eric had this idea for what he called “a talk show in the future” that was compressed into, like, 30 seconds, and I was like, ‘Great — let’s make it!’ And so we took the 42 cents we had and rented this, like, trashy bodega — like, an abandoned bodega — and made what became ‘The Eric André Show.’ And Adult Swim picked it up.”

As for “Street Fighter,” the new movie stars Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji as pseudo brothers Ken Masters and Ryu, respectively. It is far from the first adaptation of the game series, with the 1994 live-action movie “Street Fighter” — starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raúl Juliá — followed by various other features, TV series and comic book runs.

Sakurai — whose credits also include his debut film, the 2010 crime thriller “Aardvark,” and a second-season episode of the acclaimed series “Beef” — became of interest to the studio producing the new movie, Legendary Pictures, after the directing tandem of Danny and Michael Philippou moved on from the project.

“I think what (Legendary) wanted was someone who could approach the material in a bit more of a left-of-center way — kind of like a subversive or crazy way of making an adaptation,” he says. “‘Street Fighter,’ as a game, has that kind of gonzo tone, and so I think we were all very united on what not to do — a gritty, dark, realistic version of ‘Street Fighter.’”

Furthermore, Sakurai — who has worked as a cinematographer on a couple of movies — says preserving the essence of “Street Fighter” was very important to him.

“I wanted to bring a very lore- and visually accurate representation of the game in a way that was so extreme that it almost has a sort of punk-rock flavor to it.”

He points to the decidedly flat-top hairdo worn by the game character Guile, portrayed in the movie by wrestling superstar Cody Rhodes.

“The normal choice would be, ‘OK, that works in a video game, but in a movie, we should tone down his hair,’” he says. “I was like, ‘Let’s celebrate it and, like, lean into how insane and crazy it is.

“A lot of choices that we made — it was like that kind of thing, where you’re leaning into the sort of bizarre qualities that make the game so iconic.”

Sakurai goes way back to the original 1987 game. He remembers when a childhood friend who lived a few doors down from him got his hands on a copy. They played it a lot.

“As a half-Asian kid growing up in Ohio at that time, there weren’t a lot of things in American pop culture that had Japanese characters,” he says. “There was a connection between my Japanese roots and the things that I was watching — anime and manga, like ‘Akira’ and ‘Ghost in the Shell’ and things like that.

“Finally, something like that resonated within American pop culture. That was a really special moment, and the game has always stuck with me.”

While Centineo (“The Recruit”) and Koji (“Warrior”) are front and center, with Callina Liang (“Tell Me Everything”) and David Dastmalchian (“Dune”) as the next-most-important figures, heroine Chun-Li and villain M. Bison, respectively, the cast is loaded with familiar faces as supporting characters. The cast includes music stars Orville Peck and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, another WWE star in Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoai and Hollywood heavyweight Jason Momoa as the video effects-enhanced Blanka.

And ol’ pal André portrays a prominent noncombatant, Don Sauvage — even though Sakurai says he originally hoped to play another role.

“When he found out I was doing ‘Street Fighter,’ he’s like, ‘Let me be Blanka!’” Sakurai says. “But at that point, Jason Momoa had, like, called up, threatening the studio, being like, ‘If I’m not Blanka, I don’t know what I’m going to do!’ He was so passionate about it, so, of course, he’s Blanka. So I had to find another role for Eric.”

Regardless, “Street Fighter” will rise or fall largely based on people buying into the dynamic between one-time co-martial arts risers Ken and Ryu — with the former having become a product-endorsing celebrity and the latter having slipped out of the spotlight as the 1993-set story begins — so nailing that casting was paramount.

(Centineo and Koji) are, in my mind, so perfect in their roles and their chemistry and who they are as people — you’re seeing something very authentic on screen when you see them,” Sakurai says. “Also, they’re just unbelievably great actors. Andrew Koji, who plays Ryu, is such an incredible martial artist. If you’ve seen ‘Warrior,’ (you know) he’s a beast.”

Another key choice Sakurai and his collaborators made was to present the film’s handful of flashback sequences in a style heavily inspired by Japan’s anime and influenced in part by director Quentin Tarantino’s incorporation of an anime sequence into his 2003 martial arts film, “Kill Bill: Volume 1.”

“You know, the conventional way of doing it is to de-age through VFX or hire child actors or whatever, and none of the choices felt right for the tone of what we were going for,” he says. “And we realized there’s such a deep connection between ‘Street Fighter’ and anime — I mean, to the point of ‘Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie’ and ‘Street Fighter’ the animated TV show.

“We worked with a company called Titmouse, and I’m very proud that every frame of animation in this film is hand-drawn by an artist.”

Ultimately, Sakurai’s film, with its booming sound effects and IMAX format, is largely about creating spectacle.

“I designed this movie for a communal viewing experience. Like, that’s what I want out of it, you know?” he says. “If you’re a fan of the game or of ’90s movies, go to the theater with your friends and watch it as a group because that’s kind of how it works best.”

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