It looks like there’s no fatality that can keep the Mortal Kombat film franchise down. While there have been attempts to get the movies going again we haven’t seen anything on the big screen since 1997. Now however, there’s a big name involved in rebooting the movies who has earned himself a lot of Hollywood credibility recently. Furious 7 director James Wan is on board to produce the new film.
The Tracking Board has the details that Wan, who directed the fifth highest grossing movie of all time, should be able to bring some new life to the perpetually stalled project. The movie is being written by David Callaham (The Expendables) and Oren Uziel, who wrote the short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth which spawned the well-received web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy.
The film will be a standalone reboot not connected to the previous films or the web series. Interestingly, it also doesn’t look to hold a great deal of connection to the game series, being called a "departure from the mythology." Hopefully it won’t be a major departure from the mythology if they expect to bring in the serious fans. They are promising brutal martial arts action, so they are keeping the most important part.
The first Mortal Kombat game was released in 1992 and each one focuses on a martial arts tournament made up of people as well as creatures from other realms. The first Mortal Kombat movie was released in 1995 and a follow-up, subtitled Annihilation followed two years later. There had been plans for a third movie but those eventually died off. The game series has continued on nearly uninterrupted, even after the bankruptcy of the original developer. The most recent game in the series, Mortal Kombat X has been receiving generally positive reviews, which likely has also helped build interest in reviving the films.
In addition to his recent work on Furious 7 Wan has also worked on films like The Conjuring and the Insidious series, so he has an eye for darkness as well as action. Those two elements should work well together in a potential Mortal Kombat movie. While it would be great to have Wan direct the movie himself, the next best option is to have Wan be the guy who picks the director.
While we’re not holding our breath to see anything come from this soon, James Wan is one of Hollywood’s "it" people right now, so he has the ability to make wheels turn just by standing near them. If he can't make this movie happen it's hard to think of what could. Are you excited to see a new Mortal Kombat movie in the works?
