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.

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