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Mortal Kombat movie writer says the new film will feature a lot of familiar faces, and will include fatalities from the games
The next Mortal Kombat movie is officially underway, although plot details right now are scarce. While we wait for more information on that front, Comicbook.com talked to writer Greg Russo to see what fans can look forward to in terms of the cast.
"Yeah. You know the characters are ... One of the trickiest things I think with adapting the properties are there are so many characters, right. I mean there are, I think there's 70 something characters in this and we don't have the ability to stagger these films like the MCU does, right? We can't do a Sonya movie and then do a Liu Kang movie. So we're forced right into Avengers mode off the bat. So when that happens from a story perspective, you're naturally going to have to juggle a lot of different characters, and you realize very soon that you only have so much room in, what's hopefully, story one. I mean we only -- our mantra as the team behind this movie is always kind of, movie one first, you know, let's just make that great. Let's not think about anything else.
So you only have so much room. And what one of the hardest things has been from a writing standpoint is saying, okay, who makes sense for this first film? And who makes more sense for what would be maybe a subsequent chapter of this world? Because once you really get into it, you realize that... I guess what I should say is, I don't think anybody wants to turn this into a, actually, let me back up and say this. I think a lesson we learned from Annihilation, the second film, is the more you try to cram into a movie, the more characters you try to cram in, I think they end up just getting lost and they feel like they're just thrown in for no reason. And that was something that we really wanted to avoid.
If we're going to put characters into this, we want to make sure that they had a chance to really be developed, that they're fleshed out, and that they play a real role in the story. So that's kind of, in terms of the characters, that was, in terms of the actual choosing of the characters, it's just gonna be a lot of familiar faces for sure. Everyone, I think most of the characters that you know and love will hopefully will get in there. If a character is not in there, it's because it was kind of decided that it's better off saved for a later point where they can actually really shine and be developed appropriately."
One thing you can rest easy about is the fatalities those characters will be performing. Russo confirmed that the R-rated film will definitely have the over-the-top finishers, and furthermore, they're going to mix fatalities from the games with some new ideas as well.
"Game accurate? Yes, we are. I can say for sure that the fatalities that we're going to put into the film are from the game. We're going to come up with some new things that we haven't seen before, but at the same time we want to ... if we're going to do it and use that device, we want to make sure that it's not just in there just to be in there and have that point to the story. So everything will always have that point to what's happening in the story, it will feel awesome and badass, and it's going to play a role, you know, it's not just going to be there just to be showy.