‘Mortal Kombat’ sequel in the works with first film’s director

Simon McQuoid, director of the 2021 film reboot of Mortal Kombat, will return to helm a sequel.

Released in April 2021, Mortal Kombat launched simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max in the US, where it exceeded expectations and pulled in almost $85million (£70.9million) at the global box office.

According to Deadline, McQuoid will return as director on a sequel. The first film marked his feature debut, after previously directing adverts for numerous gaming companies.

The upcoming sequel will mark the fourth live-action film based on the video game franchise, following 1995’s Mortal Kombat, sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and last year’s reboot. A number of animated spin-offs have also been released.

The cast for last year’s reboot included Lewin Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Mehcad Brooks as Jax Briggs, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang and Chin Han as Shang Tsung.

In a two-star review, NME wrote: “In keeping with the original game, the gore comes thick and fast. It leads to an uneven tone, but the fans are supposed to cheer at the multiple limb-dismemberments and snicker at the dropping of f-bombs; not worry about why the one-liners are so camp.

“At times, Mortal Kombat is almost as ridiculous as the early-’90s adaptations that did their best to kill the genre. But it doesn’t matter how many times these movies get killed, studios will happily drop a ton of tokens for another round.”

A huge slate of films and TV shows based on gaming franchises are in development, including HBO series The Last Of Us and a Super Mario movie starring Chris Pratt.