Among the many remakes and reboots coming our way soon, Mortal Kombat will be getting a whole new makeover. The infamous martial arts fighting movie, inspired by the video game of the same name, debuted in 1995 and earned a respectable $122 million. With a budget of only $18 million, the film did much better than its closest competitor, Street Fighter, which had a bigger budget and pulled in less revenue.
Although the film paved the way for more profitable video game movie franchises like Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat became a joke after the second film, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, left fans unimpressed. After a twenty year break from the film industry, Warner Bros. decided it was time for the prodigious and revered video game series to break back onto the big screen.
Fans will welcome back many familiar faces from the Mortal Kombat franchise. That HashTag Show notes some of the returning characters, including Kano, Sonya Blade, Lord Raiden, Mileena, Jackson “Jax” Briggs, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Shang Tsung. According to ScreenRant, several other characters will make the cut that were either minor characters in the video games, starred in the animated series, or are new to the franchise altogether. Most notable from the current list, however, are the major characters that are missing: Johnny Cage, Sub-Zero, and Scorpion, staples of the Mortal Kombat world, are M.I.A. Hopefully these iconic characters will somehow fight their way into the storyline.
In contrast to the well-known video game characters who monopolized screen time in the first film, the Mortal Kombat reboot takes a page from the success of Resident Evil and centers the storyline around a character that has never been involved in the franchise in any capacity. Cole Turner is a boxer who is recruited to determine the fate of Earth, and he’s both the star of the film and the newest addition to the Mortal Kombat universe. Hopefully Mortal Kombat fans will warmly welcome Cole Turner, just as Resident Evil fans embraced Milla Jovovich‘s Alice.
With a fresh script by Greg Russo, and new up-and-coming director Simon McQuoid at the helm, production will begin soon on this latest attempt to create a successful film franchise out of a popular video game series.
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