Video game movies have traditionally struggled with success at the box office as well as with fans of the games who want to see their favorite characters realized in the best way possible. but in recent years movies based on video games have begun to find traction. Sonic the Hedgehog was a big enough hit to earn itself a sequel, and Sonic 2 has been an even bigger hit. Another popular game franchise Mortal Kombat, is getting its own movie sequel ready, that will likely get fans of the previous film and the games very excited.
Mortal Kombat wasn’t a box office smash, though that likely had more to do with it being released in early 2021, when movie theaters were only just beginning to reopen. However, between the box office, and the viewing numbers for Mortal Kombat on HBO Max, Warner Bros. clearly decided the movie warranted a sequel. Mortal Kombat 2 writer Jeremy Slater recently spoke to The Direct about the project and while he wasn’t revealing many details about the story, he says the next movie is using lessons learned by the first movie to improve the sequel. Slater explained…
It’s really fun so far. We’re about halfway through the script. I’m working really closely with the director and the studios, and the game guys, and I think—I can’t say anything about the actual story, but I think they definitely learned some lessons the last time around in terms of, ‘Here’s the stuff fans responded to, and here’s what people liked out of the movie, and here’s the stuff that didn’t work out as well as we hoped.’ So we’re really looking at this as a chance to take everything that worked in the first one and do it even better and give the audience even more, and make something that is just incredibly satisfying, and really exciting, and unpredictable.
As far as what worked in the last Mortal Kombat movie, fans were generally happy to see some of their favorite characters in the story, and many of those characters showed off game-accurate fatalities, which fans loved to see. It certainly won’t be too surprising to see more of that in the forthcoming sequel.
The other thing that we’re fairly certain we will see in the sequel is Johnny Cage. The popular character who has been part of Mortal Kombat since the very beginning of the game’s did not appear in the movie, but the character was teased in the final moments of the film. Who will play Johnny Cage is still a mystery, but Josh Hartnett is apparently interested in the role of Cage, as is WWE’s The Miz.
With the script for Mortal Kombat 2 only being half done, it will certainly be some time before this movie goes into production, never mind gets a release date. Still, if the sequel does what the filmmakers want, and doubles down on what fans liked about the first movie, it will likely be worth the wait.