New details for Mortal Kombat’s big-screen reboot surface online

By Rick Marshall November 7, 2012

Not only is the long-rumored reboot of the Mortal Kombat movie franchise happening, it could receive a bigger budget than both of its predecessors.

Speaking with Web Series Network at the Marseille Webfest, Warner Bros. exec Lance Sloane described the upcoming reboot directed by Mortal Kombat: Legacy filmmaker Kevin Tancharoen as a “$40-50 million feature film,” and indicated that it was one of the studio’s spotlight projects on their upcoming slate.

You can watch the video with Sloane below:

If Sloane’s estimate of the as-yet-untitled film’s budget is accurate, that would give it the highest budget of any film in the franchise so far. The original 1995 Mortal Kombat was made for an estimated $18 million and generated $122 million at the worldwide box office, while its follow-up, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was budgeted for $30 million but only generated $44.5 million at the box office. A third film, Mortal Kombat: Devastation was shelved due to the poor performance of Annihilation.

Tancharoen found his way to the reboot director’s chair after creating a short film titled Mortal Kombat: Rebirth that went viral online in 2010. As Sloane mentions in the video, Mortal Kombat rights-holders Warner Bros. initially sent its legal team after Tancharoen, but eventually ended up having him direct a web series based on the franchise titled Mortal Kombat: Legacy. The series was received well, and a second “season” is in production now in addition to the upcoming big-screen reboot.

Also on the Mortal Kombat wire is some unconfirmed information regarding the film’s plot that may or may not pan out as fact, but is interesting all the same.

According to movie blog Bloody Disgusting, the live-action film will tell the story of “a lowly unlucky supermarket employee who discovers that he has out of this world powers and must decide between good and evil, even though the evil side has helped him discover his true potential and who he really is.”

While that plot sounds suspiciously like the premise of the Evil Dead movies, nothing has been confirmed at this point regarding Mortal Kombat outside of Tancharoen’s involvement and Sloane’s comments.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Entertainment

Former Digital Trends Contributor

A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…

Gaming

All Baobab Tree locations in Tales of Kenzera

Zau fights a dragon in Tales of Kenzera: Zau.

While it wasn't marketed as being a particularly punishing game, Tales of Kenzera: Zau is by no means easy. You will have plenty of environmental challenges that can instantly sap your life, and the enemies you face -- especially the bosses -- are no slouches. When you first begin, it will only take a couple of bad hits to send Zau to the land of the dead himself. Alongside the Trinkets you can unlock through hidden challenges around the map, there are also Baobab Trees where Zau can stop to reflect on his journey thus far, have a short dialogue with Kalunga, and get a small addition to his health bar. Like everything in the game, these trees aren't prohibitively hidden, but you could easily pass one by and have no idea where it was when trying to backtrack. These are all the Baobab Tree locations so you can max out your health bar.
All Baobab Tree locations
There are six Baobab Trees to find in Tales of Kenzera: Zau and each adds a small segment of health to your total. When you collect them all, you will roughly double your HP bar. Here are each of their locations in the rough order you should naturally find them in. Most can be picked up on your first time through that area.
Ikakaramba

This one is very hard to miss as it is directly on your critical path. If you do, you can fast travel to the nearby campfire to grab it.
The Great Cliffs

Gaming

All Fallout games, ranked

The courier in his nuclear gear and holding his gun in Fallout: New Vegas key art.

Who would've thought the post-apocalypse could be such a fun time? The Fallout franchise has taken the idea of a Mad Max-like future and not only made it into a wildly popular game franchise but also a hit TV series. The core franchise has been around since the late '90s, and yet we've had only a handful of mainline entries in the series since it was revived by Bethesda with Fallout 3. With Starfield in the rearview mirror and the next Elder Scrolls title currently being the dev team's focus, it could be close to another decade before we can set foot in the wasteland ourselves once again. What better time, then, to look back at the franchise and rank all the games from best to worst?

Fallout: New Vegas

Gaming

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble is as fun to watch as it is to play

Monkeys race one another in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble.

I couldn’t tell you what the last Super Monkey Ball game I played was, but I can still talk your ear off about the series. That’s thanks to the speedrunning community that has formed around the franchise, making it into the most exciting game to watch when it's played at a high level. After spending close to a decade watching old games turned inside and out, I’m ready to finally dig into a new entry for myself.

Thankfully, I’m getting that chance on June 25 when Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble launches on Nintendo Switch. The latest entry in Sega’s precise platforming series comes loaded with content, from an adventure mode with 200 stages to multiple 16-player multiplayer modes. That’s all exciting, but my attention was on one question when I sat down to demo all of that last week: How fun will it be to watch players master it?