Sifu - video game from Sloclap

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This Sifu videogame needs its own indie thread apart from Best-MA-video-games-thread. The problem is Sifu is an impossible term to search here, but Slocap is the way.

Story Kitchen Teams With Gaming Company Sloclap To Adapt Popular Video Game ‘SIFU’ Into Live-Action Feature
By Justin Kroll
Senior Film Reporter
@krolljvar

December 2, 2022 11:05am


Kovert PR
EXCLUSIVE: Following a competitive pursuit, Story Kitchen, has partnered with Sloclap to adapt their hot new hit videogame, SIFU, into a Live-Action feature film with Story Kitchen partner Derek Kolstad adapting the script.

Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson will produce alongside Mike Goldberg, Kolstad, Dan Jevons and Timothy I. Stevenson. Jeff Ludwig will also be producing alongside Story Kitchen, formerly a VP for Ritchie/Wigram Productions, before launching his own shingle, The Menagerie.

Based on the videogame developed & published by Sloclap,, the game tells a story of revenge set in modern-day China. It follows the student of a martial arts school’s master (Sifu) as he seeks to avenge the murder of his mentor. The twist, however, is that thanks to a magical talisman, each time our hero dies, he’s resurrected, but the price paid is that he ages with every use. And should he become too old too fast, his death shall become permanent, and his quest unfulfilled. It’s being described as JOHN WICK meets M. Night Shyamalan’s OLD.

Within the first three weeks of the game’s release, SIFU sold over 1MM games; and is separately nominated for ‘Best Independent Game,’ ‘Best Fighting Game,’ and ‘Best Action Game’ for the upcoming ‘The Game Awards’ (December 8th, 2022).

Best known for creating the cultural phenomenon of John Wick, Kolstad is currently in post-production for the fourth John Wick film, as well as a limited TV series for Starz, The Continental. This now iconic IP includes multiple Videogames, Graphic Novels, Toys, and a recently completed Roller Coaster in Dubai. Outside of the ‘Wick Universe,’ and after Co-EP’ing Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier for Disney+, Kolstad turned his attention to Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell adaptation for Netflix (which quickly secured a two-season order and is currently in production) as well as a sequel to Universal Pictures’ 2021 theatrically released Nobody franchise, starring Bob Odenkirk.

Johnson’s producing credits include Sonic The Hedgehog and Tomb Raider.

Story Kitchen is repped by APA, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP and Behr Abramson Levy Johnson. Derek Kolstad is repped by APA, Circle of Confusion and Behr Abramson Levy Johnson. Jeff Ludwig is repped by Gersh.

Ludwig currently has the videogame adaptation, Alan Wake, set up at the AMC Network.

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Sifu-video-game-from-Sloclap
Secret Level

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How Secret Level brought the propulsive Sifu — and a killer hallway fight — back to life (exclusive)
The creative minds behind the animated anthology series dive deep into all the action crammed into the eight-minute short.

By Nick Romano Published on November 26, 2024 10:00AM EST

Repetition is fundamental to the gaming experience. You fight, you die, you respawn, you learn, you try again. It’s also core to the narrative of Sifu, the popular beat-’em-up game published by Sloclap in 2022. The main character, the only child of a sifu (master) at a martial arts school, sets out for revenge against those who killed his father. Every time he dies along his quest, he’s resurrected by the magic from a mystical talisman, though he always returns a few years older in age.

“That’s the montage of every kung fu movie: the doing it over and over until you get good and can go face the bad guy,” says JT Petty, an executive producer and writer on Amazon’s Secret Level, the animated anthology series that adapts 15 video games with each episode, including one propulsive eight-minute short for Sifu. “They just built that into their mythology.”

“Of course, that was essential [to adapting Sifu],” series creator Tim Miller chimes in during an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, “but then there was also Dave” — supervising director and EP Dave Wilson — “coming in pretty early and going, ‘I want to do a big fight with a glass floor.’ So then the whole story gets warped around Dave’s desire to do a fight.”


'Sifu' episode of 'Secret Level'. AMAZON MGM STUDIOS

“Because no one will let me shoot it in live-action!” Wilson jokes. “The thing that I like about Sifu is it’s not just about repetition. It’s about the price of repetition," he adds on a more serious note. "He’s trading knowledge for years. That’s straight from the game.” True Detective also became an unexpected reference. In developing the episode, Petty pointed to one of Matthew McConaughey’s poignant lines from season 1 of the HBO crime drama: “Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing, so be careful what you get good at.”

“I was like, ‘Well, f---ing yes!’” Wilson exclaims. “The repetition was definitely a core part of it, but it was, ‘What do you spend your life dedicating that repetition to?’ that I love.”

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“Sifu: It Takes a Life,” the title of this particular Secret Level episode, begins with a moment of peace before the carnage. A man, MC (Parry Shen), sits at a dumpling stand, waiting to enjoy the elderly owner’s coveted family recipe perfected over ages. He can't yet enjoy the meal, however, when a group of thugs cross his path along the street. He sees their tattoos, the same ones belonging to the men who killed his father and scarred MC as a child. He follows the men into a neon-lit club and his labored, violent trudge towards retribution begins as the talisman throws him back and forth between the realms of the dead and the living. Ping Wu steps in to voice MC as he becomes older and older with each loss until he faces the final boss as an elderly man.



Older MC in 'Secret Level's 'Sifu' episode. AMAZON MGM STUDIOS

As with the other installments of Secret Level’s first season, the creative team compiled exhaustive pitch decks for each video game to serve as their encyclopedias, which were then used to brainstorm story ideas. Rich Larson, the author of such books as Ymir (2022) and Annex (2018), wrote a novelized short story for the Sifu episode before working with Petty to develop the teleplay. According to Wilson, Sloclap wanted the martial arts and cultural touchstones to feel authentic, but everything else narratively was left up to them. Hence, Wilson's desire-made-real for a fight sequence to play out on top of a glass floor, an idea he's wanted to pull off for 30 years, ever since watching the 1985 movie The Last Dragon, which includes a training scene on top of glass panes.

"The irony is no stunt man will shoot on a glass floor," Wilson says. "The reason it's dangerous in live-action, obviously, is with the sweat and the blood and the glass, you can't put pads down, they'll just slip and kill themselves. And there's nowhere to hide the wires, you can't rig up. I asked multiple times and the answer was always no."

Not so much a problem with animation, though. "I came in and pitched it to Wayne Dalglish" — Emmy nominated for stunt coordination on HBO's Peacemaker, Wilson continues. "They were in the stages over at Amazon and they'd bought two-inch thick Perspex [a brand of plexiglass] and laid it down. They prevised it up. Their fight is three times longer. I told them, 'Wayne! I got two minutes.' The first fight was like six minutes and there were eyeballs popping out of heads."


MC tracks down his father's killers in 'Secret Level's 'Sifu' episode. AMAZON MGM STUDIOS

Clearly, he has something in common with the central character of Sifu: there's benefits to trying something over and over.

Secret Level premieres on Amazon's Prime Video streaming platform Dec. 10.

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