Mortal Kombat Writer Greg Russo Explains Ending Plans for Johnny Cage

The final frame of the new Mortal Kombat movie offers a pretty massive tease regarding the story of the potential sequel. After being asked by Raiden to recruit the rest of Earthrealm’s champions, Cole mentions that he’s going to look for someone in Hollywood, a comment that is followed by a poster for a movie starring none other than Johnny Cage. If there is a sequel, the Mortal Kombat franchise will be bringing Johnny Cage back into the world of live-action.

Following the debut of Mortal Kombat, writer Greg Russo talked to Collider about the film’s ending, and how the creative teamed tried to set up subsequent films. Russo specifically dove into the idea behind the Cage poster, and what it means for the sequel.

“Johnny’s tease at the end, the button, it changed different ways,” Russo explained. “I remember there were different versions of it. That poster was something that the design team did, which I love. I picked ‘Citizen Cage’ ’cause I just thought that was hilarious. ‘Fight For Your Rights.’ So I picked that and put it in the script and then they designed an amazing poster. And then it had lived in other places, so it actually wasn’t the button for awhile, it was earlier in the story, like they were walking and you just see it in the background. And we felt like that just wasn’t enough, ’cause you wanted to really hit on it. I remember there was a version for the end where they actually went to the lot. So Cole and Sonya went to the studio lot. I forget what it even was, they pulled up, and they were going to the meeting. It was gonna be shot at Warner Brothers. But it just felt like, with the pandemic and everything, it got to a point where it was hard to do a lot of that. I love the way that it buttons and it’s simple. And yeah, hopefully we can tell more of those stories.”

In the same interview, Russo mentioned seeing Mortal Kombat as the first film in a trilogy, a “pre-tournament” story that would eventually lead to the actual tournament in the sequel. That led to the team wanting to save some big characters — like Johnny Cage — for the next movie.

“Everybody was focused on movie one, right? You don’t get a trilogy without it. But as a writer, you should never be painting yourself in a corner, that’s my motto. You should always be thinking about ‘Where can your story go even beyond the two hours — this is not a lot of time — that I have to tell this story? Where else can it go?’ So I always saw it as leading up to something bigger. And so the idea then became, alright, we have a certain amount of characters we can fit, don’t have the luxury of having individual movies of all these characters, I’m getting thrown right into Avengers mode, which is fun and a challenge. But I knew that there were other characters I just couldn’t get in, and it actually didn’t even make sense to bring in yet for the story. So then it became a matter of, ‘Well, who’s the big characters that we wanna save?’ ‘Cause you also don’t wanna use everything.”

What did you think of Mortal Kombat? Are you hoping to see Johnny Cage show up in the sequel? Let us know in the comments!