TheMortal Kombatfranchise, at least in movie form, has been dormant for nearly 20 years. But it seems like it won’t be for much longer. New Line has been planning on making a newMortal Kombatmovie for quite some time and now they have made a big step forward. The project now has a director in the form ofSimon McQuoid.
Varietyis reporting that the director is in talks to helm the newMortal Kombatmovie for New Line. If the nameSimon McQuoiddoesn’t stand out to you, don’t worry, you are probably not alone. He is best known as a commercials director, but is very in-demand in that field and has worked on a lot of high-profile campaigns for companies like PlayStation, Beats by Dre and Range Rover. He has also won several industry awards such as the GRANDY Award for his commercial work. So he may not be a big name, but his resume is impressive.
New Line Cinema originally announced plans to revisit thevideo game franchiseback in 2011, and at the time it sounded like it would be a flat out reboot. We reported earlier this year that,Christopher Lambert, who played Raiden in the firstMortal Kombat, stated he was supposedly in talks to star in this new movie and that it wouldn’t be a flat out reboot. Instead, it would be something of a sequel involving inter-dimensional time travel. The studio also tappedThe ConjuringdirectorJames Wanto produce the movie last year, with a script fromOren Uziel(22 Jump Street) andDave Callaham(Godzilla).
Hollywood has always had a very difficult time cracking the code on video game movies, but it hasn’t been for a lack of trying. One of the earliest attempts at this was the firstMortal Kombatlive-action movie. There has been some truly abysmal video game tomovie adaptations, and the sequel,Mortal Kombat: Annihilationdefinitely falls into that category. But oddly enough, the firstMortal Kombatmovie isn’t really that far from what could be a very goodvideo gamemovie. It is certainly cheesy, and the effects don’t hold up at all, but it is easy to see how they could take that template, update it a bit and use modern effects to get it right. It is just hard to know ifSimon McQuoidis the right guy.
James Wanvery much feels like the right guy and even though he isn’t directing, his involvement is definitely a credit to this newMortal Kombatmovie. He produced the horror hitLights Outthat came out over the summer and helped guide directorDavid Sandbergto great success. Hopefully, he can do the same forSimon McQuoidin this situation.
Thefirst Mortal Kombatmade $122 million worldwide back in 1995, which isn’t bad money given what was considered to be a solid box office performance at the time.Mortal Kombat: Annihilationonly made $51 million. New Line hasn’t set a release date for the newMortal Kombat, but ifSimon McQuoiddoes indeed get the job, things should start moving along and hopefully this movie can finally get made. IfAssassin’s Creedwinds up doing well in December, that may help encourage the studio to get the ball rolling as well.
