While Mortal Kombat fans and Ryan Reynolds want Ryan Reynolds to play Johnny Cage in the sequel to 2021’s new Mortal Kombat movie, Warner Bros. apparently has other plans. According to a new report, Warner Bros. isn’t interested in Ryan Reynolds, Chris Pratt, The Miz, or any of the other names floating around the past couple of months, but rather they are eyeing Charlie Hunnam, best known for his role as Jackson “Jax” Teller in Sons of Anarchy, as well as his prominent roles in movies like Pacific Rim, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and The Lost City of Z.
The report comes the way of Daniel Richtman, an industry insider known for his scoops on movies, television, and video games. Unfortunately, it doesn’t disclose much else, and it’s not 100 percent obvious if Warner Bros. is looking at Hunnam specifically, or for someone of the general mold of the actor.
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Whatever the case, while Hunnam isn’t one of the first names that come to mind when casting Johnny Cage, the 41-year-old actor does hold a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and has been training with Rigan Machado. In other words, he could handle the physical demands of the movie, which is something that’s clearly important to the casting director, as each casting so far has been made with the physical demands in mind.
That said, for now, take everything here with a major grain of salt. While the source in question has proven reliable in the past, it doesn’t change the fact that everything here is unofficial and subject to change.
At the moment of publishing, none of the implicated parties have commented on any of this. We don’t expect this to change, but if it does, we will be sure to update the story accordingly. In the meantime, below, you can read more about why Cage doesn’t appear in the first movie, according to producer on the reboot, Todd Garner
“I want to make a sequel, and I’ve now got Johnny Cage, which hasn’t been used in the first one,” said Garner earlier this year. “So I have a big stick and carrot that maybe they’ll let me have a Johnny Cage real presence in the second one. And secondarily, when you think about Mortal Kombat, if you just think about the patina of the movie, it has a very Asian feel to it. And I early on felt uncomfortable having a white male lead kind of lead that charge in the first movie. It just felt Hollywoodish to me, which is weird because he’s an actor, which also is weird. And probably my bias of… it just feels weird if I’m trying to do, and I was, do something different and diverse and true. Is it a cop-out to all of a sudden have Ryan Reynolds, not him, but… As the lead felt a little disingenuous to me and super easy to bring him in, in a big bombastic fun way in the second. And he deserves that as a character. And I love these characters, so we thought hard about it.”