New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. have been trying to get a new Mortal Kombat feature film onto screens for a while now. The last word was that commercial director Simon McQuoid would be making his feature debut on the film and that screenwriters Dave Callaham (The Expendables, Wonder Woman 2) and Oren Uziel (Cloverfield Paradox, 22 Jump Street) were involved with a script.
Omega Underground has an update of sorts to share as we’ve learned that locations are being looked at and two possible contenders are New Zealand and Australia.
James Wan recently shot Aquaman in his home country of Australia which has seen an influx of studio productions such as Alien: Covenant and Thor: Ragnarok. It’s a tempting locale due to the tax incentives the country offers along with the talent crews, not to mention it has doubled for various Asian countries in other films.
New Zealand also has ties to Warner Bros. productions as it was the production home base for their Lord of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies. Weta Workshop and Stone Street Studios in Wellington would be a huge asset to film like this.
The original 1995 film was primarily shot in Thailand and California while the less appealing sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was shot in Thailand, Jordan, and the UK.
Oren Uziel talked to Collider last year about the project reaffirming it was intended to be R-rated. This isn’t terribly surprising as the video game franchise’s gimmick has always been over-the-top gore and violence.
“I don’t know what remains of this, but I know it was going to be … It’s been a while so it’s hard to sum up quickly. It’s almost like if you took The Avengers, of if you took a storyline like that, but set it in a hard R, over the top violence and hard-edged world of Mortal Kombat. It was a little bit like that. It was a little bit of that Wanted-type story that brought together a bunch of these characters and pulled zero punches. It had a tone that was still fun, but very dark.”
New Regency/Fox’s Assassin’s Creed cost $125 million to make, so studios are shelling out big money for these video game adaptations as MGM/WB’s Tomb Raider doesn’t look cheap either.
R-rated films aren’t the money pits they used to and New Line Cinema knows this perfectly well after their IT remake earned $700 million worldwide on a budget of $35 million. Not to mention that movies like Deadpool, Logan, and John Wick have shown audiences are willing to spend money on mature action films.
Whatever they do they better bring back the theme song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjQ7jJx9PJk
Mortal Kombat is still seemingly in design/development stages and doesn’t have production or release dates.
SOURCE: OMEGA UNDERGROUND