Street Fighter Composers on How Cobra Kai Led Them to Video Game Film

Posted in: Legendary, Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: street fighter

Street Fighter Composers on How Cobra Kai Led Them to Video Game Film

Street Fighter composers Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson spoke to us about how they evoked 30 years of video game franchise to the screen.

Published Sat, 14 Nov 2026 16:16:08 -0600
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• Street Fighter composers Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson reveal how Cobra Kai unexpectedly opened the door to the film.
• The duo explains blending classic Street Fighter musical DNA with a fresh cinematic score inspired by lifelong fandom.
• They discuss honoring Yoko Shimomura’s legacy, using select themes, and why there was no time for extra cover tracks.
• Birenberg breaks down the toughest Street Fighter cue: landing Ken’s final Hadouken reveal with the right impact.

Sometimes fate has a way of lending itself to good fortune, as composers Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson went from one critically acclaimed martial arts IP in 'The Karate Kid' franchise Netflix sequel series Cobra Kai to another Paramount and Legendary's Street Fighter (2026). It was the blend of modernized nostalgia with stylized, intense sequences that made a natural match for the duo. The Kitao Shakurai film, based on the Capcom franchise of the same name from Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto that made its debut in 1987, follows street fighters Ken (Noah Centineo) and Ryu (Andrew Koji) who reunite when Chun-Li (Callina Liang) recruits them for the World Warrior Tournament. As they face a hidden conspiracy, they must confront each other and their past or face destruction. Birenberg and Robinson spoke to Bleeding Cool about how they got involved in the second theatrical live-action adaptation film after the 1994 original, how they approached the film as fans growing up on the franchise, if they had updated covers of the themes in mind, and their most challenging sequence.

Street Fighter Composers Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson on Bringing the Spirit of the Fighting Game Franchise to Life on the Big Screen.

Bleeding Cool: How did the opportunity for 'Street Fighter' come, and how'd you get involved?

Birenberg: Sometimes, there are forces beyond those of men that bring the universe from chaos into order, and this was one of those times where this is like a dream project for Zach and me, like the games are highly influential to us. Just the whole spirit of the franchise is a big influence, and we put out into the universe, like, "Man! We would love to do 'Street Fighter,' and somehow…in another room, in a different part of Los Angeles, some people working on the 'Street Fighter' movie put some music from 'Cobra Kai' into the cut while they were working on it. They were like, "Wow! This works great," and then it came time to hire a composer, and somehow our agent talked to the right person. Someone in the room was like, "Hey, you guys already are using these guys' music in the cut, and you love it." They called us in for a meeting, we pitched our vision, and it all worked out like…I don't know. It never works out that way until it does.

With over 30 years of history in the franchise to work with, how would you explain your approach as far as how the film would sound for the score while honoring the groundwork that Yoko Shimomura laid out and, obviously, you got the other games to factor in? Was it like a holistic approach, or was it something that you wanted to make from scratch?

Robinson: Well, as you know, Tom, we're no strangers to big IP. So, as we did with 'Cobra Kai,' we approached this IP with the same love and enthusiasm the fans have for it, and that we've had for other pieces of IP we've worked on. But look, we grew up with these soundtracks, and they're integral parts of our compositional identities, as I've been saying, and it was really just a natural fit for us here. We knew that there were certain moments where we wanted to use original themes, where we could nod to that. Overall, we wanted it to put our stamp on the 'Street Fighter' sound. The emotion and take the emotion of playing a video game and evoke those feelings in the movie theater, which we feel like has not really been done yet, partially because Leo and I come from a generation of composers who grew up with video game music more than we grew up with film music. No, we're scoring movies, so the way that we approach these scenes not just in 'Street Fighter,' but in a lot of things that we do, is very inspired by the music and video games and 'Street Fighter.' The musical DNA of 'Street Fighter' is just everywhere in everything that we write, and yeah, I mean, we hope that our enthusiasm came across to the audience with this.

Now, in addition to just working on the scoring and everything, did you just decide on your free time? Like, "Okay, you know what, we're going to recreate the stages of each character and just do our own version of that just for shits and giggles?" Or did you just work with whatever task at hand just for the film?

Birenberg: Truly, whatever task at hand, I would love to do an entire album of 'Street Fighter' covers of the original theme. In this case, we did the entire movie in about eight weeks, and there was not even the breathing room to write 10 more seconds of music, I don't think [laughs].

Robinson: Yeah, though, Guile's theme we did do once we had wrapped the movie, because his theme in the movie is quite short, but we knew that we had to do a full version for that.

Were there any evocations of the 1994 film?

Birenberg: Not really overtly, just captured the spirit of the franchise, which would include the games, like all the way up through Street Fighter VI, which is the current one, because they've done such a great job with the music over the years and kind of like updating the sound. It's like all of that, plus the '94 movie, and the anime. We wanted to capture the spirits of all of it, but in terms of music, except for some themes from 'Street Fighter II,' there were no overt nods from us.

What was the most difficult, I mean, this sequence that you kind of had to work through in the movie?

Birenberg: Probably Ken's final moment of Hadouken at the end. It's a big dramatic reveal, and you must land the plane as a composer on everything that you've built up to that moment and figure out how exactly you're going to play it. Are you going to get big and then get small on the reveal? Are you going to get triumphant on the reveal? Are you going to do it kind of badass? We tried it every way until everyone involved, us included, coalesced around the one you see in the movie, and we're like, that's the way to do it. That plays best.

Street Fighter, which also stars David Dashmalchian, Andrew Schultz, Jo "Roman Reigns" Anoa'I, Cody Rhodes, Jason Momoa, Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson, Eric André, Mel Jarnson, Orville Peck, Hirooki Goto, Vidyut Jammwal, Oliver Richters, Kyle Mooney, and Rayna Vallandingham, is in theaters.

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