Vidyut Jammwal expected the scale of Hollywood to be different when he joined Street Fighter. What surprised him more was the discipline. The Indian action star, who plays Dhalsim in the upcoming video-game adaptation, says his experience on the international production showed him a work culture where even major stars such as Jason Momoa, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Cody Rhodes were expected to arrive exactly when scheduled.
Speaking at a Mumbai promotional event for Street Fighter, Jammwal said he had previously heard friends focus on Hollywood’s much larger budgets. After working there himself, however, he felt the bigger difference was how strictly hundreds of people on set followed the same rules.
Referring to his co-stars, he said: “They simply don’t have a concept of arriving late.”
For Jammwal, punctuality was only one part of a system that made the production feel different.
Even one minute late gets noticed
Jammwal said roughly 300 people could be working on the set while still following a tightly controlled schedule. According to him, being even a minute behind was unusual enough for the production to check whether something had happened to the person.
His comments were not limited to actors. He also pointed to protections for crew members, explaining that technicians received additional compensation when a shoot ran beyond the contracted working period. That, in his view, created trust around overtime because workers knew the extra time would be accounted for rather than simply expected from them.
Jammwal summed up the contrast by saying: “It will take us time to reach that level.” He added that the Indian industry is already following rules and improving, but believes there is room to do more.
That qualification matters. His remarks were based on his experience making one major Hollywood production rather than a claim that every American set functions perfectly or every Indian production lacks discipline. What clearly impressed him on Street Fighter was a system in which the schedule and working conditions appeared to apply equally to stars and technicians.
Street Fighter gives Vidyut his Hollywood debut
The comparison comes as Jammwal prepares for one of the biggest international roles of his career.
Directed by Kitao Sakurai, Street Fighter adapts Capcom’s long-running fighting-game franchise and is set in 1993. The story follows Ryu, played by Andrew Koji, and Noah Centineo’s Ken Masters as Chun-Li, played by Callina Liang, draws them into a new World Warrior Tournament hiding a larger conspiracy. Capcom has confirmed the movie will reach theaters on October 16, 2026.
Jammwal plays Dhalsim, a role that fits unusually well with his real-life background. The actor has trained in Kalaripayattu since childhood and has built much of his screen career around physically demanding action roles. He has said that history made the spiritually minded fighter feel like a natural character for him to play.
The ensemble also gave him direct experience working with performers from very different backgrounds, including Momoa, 50 Cent, Cody Rhodes and WWE star Roman Reigns. Jammwal has spoken particularly warmly about Reigns, describing him as physically imposing but also gentle and straightforward off camera. Variety India
His bigger takeaway was the system, not the stars
It would have been easy for Jammwal to come back from Street Fighter talking primarily about its budget, visual effects or celebrity-heavy cast. Instead, his most pointed observation was about something far less glamorous: people showing up on time and crew members being paid properly when the schedule runs long.
That makes his Bollywood-Hollywood comparison less about which industry produces better movies and more about production culture.
Jammwal is not arguing that Indian cinema needs to imitate Hollywood creatively. His point is that professional systems become visible in small things — whether the biggest actor respects the call time, whether a delay is treated as unusual, and whether overtime is transparently compensated.
For someone making his first Hollywood film alongside some of the project’s biggest names, that appears to be what left the strongest impression.
