Splendid news regarding the upcoming 'Tekken' movie adaptation, unless you’re a fan of the video game series who doesn’t speak German.

According to Variety, Splendid Film has acquired the rights to 'Tekken', along with a number of other fantasy and horror movies, for distribution in the German-speaking territories. The other films include Marcus Nispel’s upcoming Conan; the horror-thriller The Collector, helmed by Marcus Dunstan; and Mr. Nobody, a supernatural thriller starring Val Kilmer.

Dwight Little’s Tekken was the film that really grabbed my attention, since I recall the announcement of it roughly two years ago. It premiered at the American Film Market last month, but its current U.S. distributors — The Weinstein Company, Summit Entertainment, and Crystal Sky Pictures — have remained relatively quiet. Unfortunately, the combination of only a vague U.S. 2010 release date, along with the announcement of an overseas distributor does not fill me with confidence.

Given the various video game movie adaptations either in production (Resident Evil 4, Prince of Persia) or that have been released of late (Street Fighter, Max Payne), one assumes there’d be a market for Tekken, which is based on an extremely recognizable franchise. So why, according to IMDB, does it have a premiere date in Japan, but not in North America? One possibility: After Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li failed to catch fire at the box office, executives stateside decided the market might be saturated.

On the other hand, if Street Fighter made it into theaters, while Tekken still doesn’t have anything beyond "2010" for a U.S. release date, that could possibly tell you something about the film’s quality.

I could be wrong, of course. Maybe the Weinsteins know they have a solid genre entry on their hands, and they’re taking the time to develop an ambitious marketing plan for it. Unfortunately, there tends to be a stigma attached to films that premiere overseas before they hit American theaters, and if the distributors wait too long, that could very well happen to Tekken.

Then it’ll pretty much be game over.