The Mortal Kombat reboot film at New Line Cinema is still a couple years away, with an early 2021 release date currently on the docket. But other than casting Sub-Zero, extremely little is known about the movie. Will it revisit the previous films? What about the video games — does it lift anything from the more recent stuff like the time travel story? The film’s writer, Greg Russo, didn’t spill any closely guarded secrets during our interview, but he did say that preparation for the film did include “being a lifelong fan and a huge gamer.”
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Specifically, ComicBook.com asked about what the preparation for a film like this was like given the wealth of source material. Was there any sort of direction for the new film when it came time to write it? Russo’s response was rather illuminating, if without exact detail.
“The preparation was being a lifelong fan and being a huge gamer myself,” Russo said. “So thankfully I had quite a number of years under my belt, just playing the games and getting to love the characters, getting to love the world. So you know it was easy for me to draw from a lot of the things that I really enjoyed about the games. And the mission statement for the new film has always been, we don’t want to repeat what you’ve already seen. That doesn’t really appeal to anybody, I don’t think. And they already have those films. So at the same time we wanted to tell a new story that’s going to be exciting, but that’s gonna be faithful to the lore and the games that everybody knows and loves.”
“So the mission statement was really just bring your passion to the project,” he continued, “and let’s figure out what the best story is for a new film adaptation that feels fresh and at the same time pays respect to the game.”
What do you think of what you’ve heard about the Mortal Kombat reboot so far? Are you looking forward to the new film, or do you have fond memories of the previous two movies? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!
Mortal Kombat is set to release on March 5, 2021, giving Russo and the rest of the folks involved a good amount of time to work on it. For more Mortal Kombat reboot coverage, check out all of our previous coverage right here.
