Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms Producer Felt No Pressure Following Up the Live-Action Movie

The release of Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms is just over a week away now to deliver fans 2021's second Mortal Kombat movie. Battle of the Realms is a sequel to last year's Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge and isn't related to the live-action Mortal Kombat beyond its source material, but there's reason to believe more people might have more eyes on the theatrical side of Mortal Kombat now given how hard the live-action movie was pushed in theaters and on HBO Max. Even if that is to be the case, Battle of the Realms producer Rick Morales said he and the team felt no extra pressures to follow up the live-action movie.

ComicBook.com spoke to Morales ahead of the movie's August 31st debut and asked whether the reception and attention the live-action movie got ever factored into his work Battle of the Realms. Morales said he didn't have knowledge of what was going on with the live-action side since the live-action movie and the animated series follow completely different storylines. He added that there weren't any restrictions placed on Battle of the Realms based on what might've been happening in the live-action movie.

"No, no, no, because this was being worked on while I assume they were wrapping up theirs," Morales said. "So, like I said, I had no knowledge of what they were doing on the live action side. And there was certainly no restrictions put on us about what we could or couldn't do. There wasn't anything like, "Hey, you guys need to stay away from Scorpion's story, because we're going to be handling that at the beginning of our film," or anything like that. We didn't have that communication. It was just accepting that these are two different things."

When it comes to differentiating between the two Mortal Kombat storylines, Morales said he's got faith in audiences to make the distinction and said that they never need to be connected to one another anyway.

"That's a live-action thing. This is an animated thing," Morales said. "They don't live in the same space, they don't need to. And I think people are ... They're savvy enough to understand that. If people can follow 20 some odd Marvel comics universe movies, and all this stuff that they're doing in Loki and the time travel and the alternate reality and this and that, I think they can separate the live-action from the animation."

Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms is scheduled to release on Digital, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack on August 31st.