Ed Boon Says NetherRealm’s Next Game Has Been in Development for 3 Years (Exclusive)

NetherRealm Studios boss Ed Boon says that the developer has been working on its next game after Mortal Kombat 1 to some degree for three years. As of this week, Year 2 of MK1 is beginning, notably with the release of the story expansion Khaos Reigns. After this, NetherRealm still has a handful of DLC fighters for MK1 that will roll out and include Ghostface, the T-1000 Terminator, and Conan the Barbarian. Whether or not this will be the final major content drop for MK1 isn’t yet known, but further down the line, NetherRealm already knows what it will do next. 

In an interview with ComicBook, Boon told us that NetherRealm decided three years ago on its next title. Given the nature of game development, Boon said that NetherRealm has to make decisions far in advance of what its future project will end up being. This combined with the need to keep various members of the studio busy at all times resulted in NetherRealm choosing its follow-up to Mortal Kombat 1 before the game even launched. 

“I’ve said this before but we start planning the next game long before we’re done with the previous game,” Boon said. “There is so much prep work, research, and planning. It is absolutely not the case that when we finish the game we go, ‘Okay, what’re we going to do next?’ There’s a lot of people who need to be working on something. We’ve known what our next game was going to be three years ago and we’ve been working on it in some capacity ever since.”

Outside of this confirmation, Boon didn’t provide any additional details on the nature of this project. Prior to the launch of MK1, though, Boon revealed that it was his hope to eventually “get back to the Injustice games.” Following Mortal Kombat 11, many fans believed that Injustice 3 would be the next project NetherRealm would create. Instead, it ended up being Mortal Kombat 1, which has led to calls for Injustice 3 growing even louder. 

Even if Injustice 3 is the game that NetherRealm opts to create next, we likely won’t learn about its existence until 2025, 2026, or even beyond. To that end, the studio’s latest output, Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns, releases tomorrow, September 24th, across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. 

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Update: Boon has gone on to stress that even though NetherRealm knows what its next game will be, the studio “is still fully committed to supporting Mortal Kombat 1 for a long time to come.” So even if its next project is already decided, MK1 will be the focal point of NetherRealm for a while.