\n\tThe sequel, which opened to $40 million at the box office this weekend, continues the story from the 2021 movie, which was released amid the pandemic simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. The first movie had its fans, with many praising the gory fight scenes and accuracy to the video games, but it left out one key component: the actual Mortal Kombat tournament. With the sequel, Slater doesn\u2019t waste time kicking things off with the battle-to-the-death showdowns and nostalgic characters that made the games so popular.<\/p>\n
\n\tTeased in the first movie, fan-favorite fighter Johnny Cage is introduced in \u201cMortal Kombat II,\u201d played by Karl Urban. The sequel also brings in the deadly Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), razor-sharp Baraka (CJ Bloomfield), final boss Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) and more. It doesn\u2019t hold back on the action or violent \u201cfatality\u201d kill scenes either, but, like the games, death isn\u2019t always the end for these video game characters. Multiple fighters who died in the first movie are resurrected from the afterlife to battle again in the sequel. And Slater, who\u2019s already tapped to write a third \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d movie, teases one key character who\u2019s coming back from the dead in the next film.<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore \u201cMortal Kombat II,\u201d Slater created Marvel\u2019s \u201cMoon Knight\u201d series, executive produced Netflix\u2019s \u201cUmbrella Academy\u201d and co-wrote Warner Bros.\u2019 last Monsterverse entry, \u201cGodzilla x Kong: The New Empire.\u201d He also worked on an early draft of this summer\u2019s \u201cCoyote vs. Acme,\u201d which was originally shelved despite being completed by Warner Bros. Discovery but then was saved by Ketchup Entertainment. It was announced last year at New York Comic Con that he\u2019ll be writing \u201cMortal Kombat III,\u201d continuing his sprawling video game story. With Variety, he teases what fans can expect in the threequel, which fighter is getting resurrected and who he wants to see in a spinoff.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple Photos Clean Up<\/p>\n
\t\tThe first movie set up the \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d tournament and the inclusion of Johnny Cage at the very end. Where did you start with planning things for the sequel?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThose were the two big promises in the first movie; beyond that, it was very much a blank slate. What I pitched is: It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t need to continue the story of Cole Young, but for me the joy of \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d is you put a quarter in the machine and you select a different character and you have an entirely different story. So my argument was we don\u2019t need to be tied down to just one POV; let\u2019s introduce some new characters. <\/p>\n
\n\tJohnny and Kitana became the two emotional pillars of the movie. Kitana has a really tragic, rich backstory with this warlord barbarian who killed her family, enslaved her people and stole her throne. It gives her some really personal stakes in the matter. With Johnny, we knew that we needed a big movie star to come in and join the cast. A lot of times in the past, Johnny is used as just comic relief, which is fine but it doesn\u2019t give an actor like Karl Urban very much to do. So part of my pitch was rather than trying to say he\u2019s a martial arts star who\u2019s also the biggest movie star on the planet in 2026, let\u2019s lean into those action-movie realities of what the landscape actually looks like. <\/p>\n
\n\tJohnny Cage in the original games was very famously modeled off Jean-Claude Van Damme. Obviously guys like Van Damme are not the biggest action stars in the world right now. That was a really attractive starting place for someone who had this shot at fame and because of his own mistakes he saw that success slip through his fingers and it left him feeling broken, jaded and like he doesn\u2019t have a place in the world anymore. Once I cracked that, that\u2019s a character I can take on a full journey over the course of this movie and really get the audience on his side and have you rooting for this guy. If you start him in a low place, he has plenty of room to grow and succeed.<\/p>\n
\t\tCharacters are dying and getting resurrected left and right in the movie. How did you keep track of who was on the board?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI had to draw up a full bracket before I started the script. The sad thing about the movie is you\u2019re going to have to kill some of your darlings. But it is a tournament to the death, so you have to make those tough calls. I had to figure out who I wanted standing in that final battle and then the tier below them. If these are the top two, who are the four fighting below that? Who are the eight below that? You have to plan out that tier of who you can you afford to lose. Who do you have to keep alive for narrative reasons? If we have to keep this person alive, who can we pair them against so that it doesn\u2019t seem convoluted that they managed to survive? There was a lot of mental gymnastics that goes into the basic structure. We locked the tournament wins and losses down before we wrote a page of the screenplay. We can\u2019t suddenly decide halfway through this guy lives instead, without upsetting the whole cart. Locking that down was that probably the single biggest challenge.<\/p>\n
\t\tYou kill off Cole Young, who was the protagonist in the first film, early in the sequel. How did you come to the decision to murder the previous main character?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s something I pitched in the round table when they brought in a bunch of writers because at the time I wasn\u2019t writing it. It was someone else\u2019s problem. It\u2019s very easy when you\u2019re just sitting there throwing out ideas to be like, \u201cI would kill that guy.\u201d It is tough, because I really like Lewis Tan as an actor. He\u2019s a phenomenal human being and a world class martial artist. The reality is that his inclusion was something that was sort of studio-mandated on the first movie. They wanted that POV character.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut for the fans, they look at Cole Young and they\u2019re like, \u201cThis guy doesn\u2019t belong.\u201d It\u2019s like an Avengers movie where you\u2019ve got Iron Man and Captain America, and then you have Bob over here and people are like, \u201cHe\u2019s not an Avenger.\u201d The fans have been waiting 30 years to spend time with these characters, and when it\u2019s not one of those characters eating up the screen time, they get resentful. The one thing I will say is death is never permanent in the \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d universe. So just because I don\u2019t think you\u2019re ever going to see Cole Young again, but that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re not going to see Lewis Tan again in some regards. Even for the deaths that were really hard to pull the trigger on, we do have long-term plans for some of those characters. Some of those deaths are necessities, because they are potentially setting up future story threads.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
\t\tThe other major hero death is Liu Kang, but in the video games he eventually comes back to life as a fire god. Is that something you\u2019re going to explore in \u201cMortal Kombat III\u201d?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAbsolutely. My pitch in the round table was you need two shocking deaths. Killing Cole is absolutely going to shock the casual fans who bought a ticket to the first movie and are expecting to see him be the hero again. It\u2019s not going to shock the hardcore fans who have been online calling for this character\u2019s death. On the same token, the casual fans are not going to be surprised by a death like Liu Kang, but that\u2019s going to be absolutely shattering to the hardcore fans because canonically Liu Kang is the one who defeats Shao Kahn. A lot of them are walking into the movie expecting him to be the champion. By setting up Kitana\u2019s backstory in the way we did, we sort of wrote ourselves into a corner where there was no satisfying person to kill Shao Kahn except for Kitana. She is the one who has been wronged by him and spent her life waiting for revenge.<\/p>\n
\n\tThen the question is: Do you have Liu Kang standing on the sidelines, which didn\u2019t seem that fun, or do we try to do something shocking and surprising? So we always had planned to kill him in this movie, but Ludi Lin is so goddamned good. We didn\u2019t expect how much even the casual audience would fall in love with Liu Kang. We always knew that we would be bringing Liu Kang back in some regard in the third movie. But we did wind up altering his death a little bit to make it more of a choice. So we\u2019re not sure if he actually died or did he ascend to some other plane? What actually happened to hit to him in that moment is absolutely a mystery that\u2019s going to be explored in \u201cMortal Kombat III.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tWas there any other character from first movie who died that you debated bringing back to life in the sequel?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI told them right off the bat, I\u2019m not taking this job unless I can bring Kano back to life. Josh Lawson was my favorite part about the first movie. I thought his version of Kano is so funny and so instantly iconic. So I knew I had to have him in the movie, and I really wanted a Kung Lao fight. Those were two that I had to bring back, and then you look at the amount of real estate you have. We could bring back Kabal, Reptile, Mileena or Goro, but that means we\u2019re not going to have the chance to introduce someone like Quan Chi or Jade. There\u2019s only so much real estate and new characters that the audience can can keep track of. Between Kitana, Sindel, Shao Kahn, Jade, Johnny Cage and Baraka, we already had a lot of new faces joining. The great thing about the \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d universe is death is never permanent, and that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019ll never see them again in some future installment.<\/p>\n
\t\tWhat stage is your \u201cMortal Kombat III\u201d script at?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWe\u2019re not done. I wrote an exploratory draft with me throwing a lot of different things at the wall, just to see what was resonating and what wasn\u2019t. We have a really great creative brain trust between Dave Neustadter at New Line and our producer Todd Garner. The three of us looked at those early pages and said, \u201cHere\u2019s the stuff that\u2019s working. Here\u2019s the stuff where we may be biting off more than we can chew.\u201d Now we are seeing fans watching 2 and reacting. In the same way that 2 was tailored to take advantage of the strengths of 1, hopefully 3 can now be tailored to take advantages of the strengths of 2, and we can continue to take those elements that are working and push them even further. So I\u2019m close to finishing a second draft that I feel very good about, but then ultimately it\u2019s going to be in New Line and Warner Bros.\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n
\t\tThe video games have explored different worlds, alternate futures and universe reboots. Is that a direction the movies would go in?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s a great question that I don\u2019t have a solid answer for yet. I think we would certainly want to stay steer clear of doing any sort of major timeline reboots or resets, especially because what we\u2019re learning right now is people like these characters and tone. Doing a board wipe and starting from scratch with new versions may be a bridge too far. Some of that stuff feels like fertile ground to explore, but maybe not right off the bat. Two was very much about reclaiming the mistakes of 1 and doubling down on the strengths and proving this could be a franchise. Nothing would make me happier than this becoming like New Line\u2019s version of \u201cFast and Furious,\u201d where every couple of years you get an amazing \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d movie but then there\u2019s also room for spinoffs in between where we can take some of these side characters and give them more room to flourish or play with different genres. In success, I think it\u2019s a lot easier to grow \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d into its own mini universe, and when that happens that\u2019s when you have the ability to start getting more creative with different multiversal and time travel stuff.<\/p>\n
\t\tWhat characters would you like to see get a spinoff?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tJohnny Cage and Kano, Karl Urban and Josh Lawson, have such amazing chemistry together. The idea of pairing those guys up seems incredibly fun. Obviously, Kung Lao and Liu Kang are huge fan favorites, so are Kitana and Jade. There\u2019s such a deep roster for the villains bench. This is just me as a fan geeking out. I love Scorpion and Sub-Zero. A story about Scorpion\u2019s entire life would be amazing. I\u2019m dying to get more Baraka into the universe, since he\u2019s my favorite character. It\u2019s not really an answer, because I\u2019m saying everybody. You could do Jax and Sonya\u2019s \u201cSpecial Forces.\u201d You could do \u201cDeadly Alliance.\u201d You could do \u201cShaolin Monks.\u201d There\u2019s such a deep, deep roster to draw from, because the games have had their own spinoffs and any one of those could be translated to live-action. If it\u2019s done with enough care and love, we could make it really, really awesome. There certainly have been no official plans or anything worked out, but in success the sky is the limit.<\/p>\n
\t\tWhich characters from the games would you like to see get introduced to live-action?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI know exactly which new characters we\u2019re bringing in, but it\u2019s way too early to tell people at this point. We\u2019re also being really receptive to the fan base. Todd Garner has maintained such a great relationship with the \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d fan base and keeping a dialogue open in terms of \u201cWho are you dying to see in live action?\u201d We have that feedback to take into consideration, but we also have to balance that against the story needs of where we ultimately want to take it and what we\u2019re building toward. I have dozens of characters that I want to bring into live action. Some of them are on deck next, and some of them are being saved for a hypothetical 4, 5 or 6. In success, we will get to as many of the classics as we possibly can, but we always want to be careful to never overload the audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for \u201cMortal Kombat II,\u201d now playing in theaters. Writer Jeremy Slater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,85020,62675,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-578979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-jeremy-slater","tag-mortal-kombat-2","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}