This promo trailer for Gordon Chan’s upcoming King of Fighters—yes, yet another fighting game film adaptation—is both simultaneously hilarious in its total cheese-factor, and also totally depressing when you remember that this guy directed Fist of Legend. Our friends over at Quiet Earth dug up this trailer, and I agree with them that this looks like the second coming of Corey Yuen’s D.O.A: Dead or Alive.

That could either be great news, terrible news, or a bit of both. I’m leaning towards the latter.

Even as a fan of the SNK King of Fighters video game series that this film is based on, I can barely tell what’s going on in this trailer. The film stars Sean Faris (Never Back Down) as Kyo Kusanagi (in the games he was the leader of the Japan team. So, um, yah…), Will Yun Lee (Elektra, Bionic Woman) as Kyo’s rival Iori Yagami, Maggie Q as Mai Shiranui—and of most interest to the lot of you, Darth Maul himself, Ray Park, as the big-bad Rugal Bernstein.

View the promo trailer below:

Watching this trailer, I have a hard time remembering how Chan could craft such a sublimely perfect martial arts film like Fist of Legend. To his credit, he actually wrote that film—this movie was scripted by newcomers Rita Augustine and Matthew Ryan Fischer. Then again, Chan also wrote and directed Jackie Chan vehicle The Medallion, a movie so bad I still regret watching it to this day.

The King of Fighters games were fairly popular among hardcore 2D fighting game fans, primarily because it collected characters from several SNK games. It was notable for having a rich back story that was better than anything that came out of the Street Fighter games (not saying much, I know). I’m pretty sure we can forget all about that with this film.

At this point all we can hope for is good action, but I’m not even getting those vibes from the trailer. We can expect this film some time in 2010.