Fans of the franchise ’Mortal Kombat’ have much to celebrate today as news just hit that New Line Cinema has moved forward in bringing the iconic video game back to life by hiring Kevin Tancharoen to direct the live action feature film.
This project has come full circle for Tancharoen, a big ‘Mortal Kombat’ fan. In 2010, he tried to pitch his concept of what a new ‘Mortal Kombat’ movie could look like. He had enlisted the help of Oren Uziel to write the screenplay for the eight minute short called ‘Mortal Kombat: Rebirth’ and hired Michael Jai White and Jeri Ryan to act in it. Although the pitch didn’t lead to a movie deal as he had hoped, the success of the online leaked version of ‘Rebirth’ did impress Warner Bros. enough to hire him to make a 10 episode web series called ‘Mortal Kombat: Legacy’ which has already garnered over 50 million views on YouTube.
The success of the web series has now led New Line Cinema back to Tancharoen to bring ‘Mortal Kombat’ to the big screen and they have also hired Uziel to write the screenplay. The plot of the movie has not yet been revealed but the studio is saying that this new story will not serve as an extension of the game or the YouTube digital series. It is also hoped that the release of the ‘Mortal Kombat’ reboot will be able to coincide with the next ‘Mortal Kombat’ video game in 2013.
The original ‘Mortal Kombat’ movie premiered in 1995 and grossed $122 million worldwide. Unfortunately, the 1997 sequel, ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’, didn’t fare too well only grossing $51.3 million worldwide causing the studios to shelve any possible sequels.
Whether or not we’ll see the return of Jax (Michael Jai White), Sonja Blade (Jeri Ryan), Johnny Cage (Matt Mullins), Cyrax (Shane Warren Jones) and Scorpion (Ian Anthony Dale) is still unknown. But if the YouTube version of the franchise is anything to go by, Tancharoen will be delivering an action packed film that keeps true to what ‘Mortal Kombat’ is all about.
