New Line Cinema’s Mortal Kombat reboot film appears to be chugging along, what with having recently cast The Raid‘s Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero. But other than Sub-Zero (and one assumes Scorpion, because, I mean, come on) it’s currently unclear exactly which characters might show up on the silver screen. According to the film’s writer Greg Russo, that in and of itself is a delicate balance.
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When ComicBook.com recently spoke with Russo about the upcoming film reboot, he revealed that one of the trickiest aspects of adapting the videos games is also one of the franchise’s greatest strengths: its giant roster of characters.
“One of the trickiest things I think with adapting the properties are there are so many characters, right?’ Russo said. “I mean there are, I think there’s 70 something characters in this, and we don’t have the ability to stagger these films like the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] does, right? We can’t do a Sonya movie and then do a Liu Kang movie. So we’re forced right into Avengers mode off the bat.”
“So when that happens from a story perspective, you’re naturally going to have to juggle a lot of different characters, and you’ll realize very soon that you only have so much room in, what’s hopefully, story one,” Russo continued. “So you only have so much room. And what one of the hardest things has been from a writing standpoint is saying, ‘OK, who makes sense for this first film? And who makes more sense for what would be maybe a subsequent chapter of this world?’”
Russo points to Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, the sequel film, as having trouble juggling its many characters. “I think they end up just getting lost, and they feel like they’re just thrown in for no reason,” he noted. “And that was something that we really wanted to avoid.”
What do you think of what you’ve heard about the Mortal Kombat reboot so far? Are you excited to see which characters show up? 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.
