Greg Russo, the writer of the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot, has confirmed on Twitter that the movie will be R-Rated and that the film will feature on-screen fatalities. The fact that Russo didn’t say which fatalities will make it to the big screen suggests that some of them will be pulled directly from the game. This marks the first time that a live-action Mortal Kombat movie will be R-Rated.
Mortal Kombat is expected to start shooting in Adelaide, Australia sometime later this year. It is said to be the biggest production in South Australia’s history. So far, only Sub-Zero has been cast, as far as we know. The iconic ice ninja will be played by Joe Taslim (The Raid).
James Wan of Conjuring and Aquaman fame is producing the upcoming adaptation while Simon McQuoid is attached to direct. The former name is certainly the biggest attached to the project thus far, but it’s the latter who’s the biggest wildcard involved with the production process. McQuoid has never directed a feature film before but he has directed commercials for PlayStation.
The screenplay comes from Russo, who is also writing the still untitled Resident Evil reboot. It seems that quite a bit of video game adaptation weight is being put on his shoulders. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not he is worthy of the…honor of writing such high-profile video game adaptations.
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Interestingly, Mortal Kombat is one of the few video game adaptations that has much of a reputation to uphold at all. While the film is far from perfect, it represents one of the most notable attempts at bringing a video game to the big screen to date. Until the release of Detective Pikachu, there were many who considered it to be the undisputed king of video game adaptations.
The Mortal Kombat series itself has certainly held up well over the years. Despite some controversy, Mortal Kombat 11 was generally well-received and reportedly sold quite well. Expect to hear much more about the Mortal Kombat reboot ahead of its March 5, 2021 release date.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.