Back in vogue once again thanks to NetherRealm Studios’ gruesome, gleefully violent reboot (franchise revival?), the new Mortal Kombat movie is beginning to gain some traction over at Warner Bros.
Boasting a script penned by Oren Uziel as well as Godzilla‘s Dave Callaham, Warner’s true ace in the hole is Aquaman director James Wan, who told IGN recently that he has no intention of rushing the video game adaptation.
Coming off his success on horror sequel The Conjuring 2 – over $317 million worldwide at the time of writing – Wan spoke to the outlet at the Television Critics Association, revealing that Mortal Kombat is “still cooking away. With that particular project, that’s a really cool property that I loved growing up as a kid. Besides the game, even the movies as well, I kind of enjoyed them for what they are.”
That’s largely because James Wan is wary off the franchise’s spotty track record on screen – Paul W.S. Anderson’s widely derided feature, for example – and instead wants to do right by the über-violent source material.
“The key here is to try and do it right. I don’t want to rush into it. So right now, we’re just trying to take our time to make sure it’s heading in the right direction. I think that’s more important than trying to rush through it and pump up something that no one likes.”
As for the reason Wan become attached to Mortal Kombat in the first place, the producer, writer and filmmaker told IGN:
“I love the characters. I think they’re such colorful characters. It’s such an amazing take on, basically, Enter the Dragon. It’s that fantasy version, the video game version, of Enter the Dragon. And in doing so, they ended up creating such interesting characters and I think that is such a cool world to explore. This really mythical, bigger world that lives on another dimension on top of ours. I think that’s really fun to play with and so we’ll see.”
One actress who is already keen to get in on that mythical action is Megan Fox, who recently lobbied to play the role of Kitana in Warner’s Mortal Kombat redo. Nothing has been made official just yet of course, but we’ll keep you posted once we hear more.