Oren Uziel Compares Original Mortal Kombat Movie Pitch To R-Rated Avengers

Though he acknowledges that his original spec script has likely been tinkered with ever since it was first turned in to Warner Bros., God Particle scribe Oren Uziel has shed new light on his proposal for the Mortal Kombat movie, which he compares to an R-rated version of The Avengers.

Per Collider, Uziel began by detailing his long history with the video game adaptation, which tapped Simon McQuoid to direct almost six months ago – for what it’s worth, Aquaman helmer James Wan is also attached to produce. Oren Uziel was actually one of the first writers to take a crack at the live-action Mortal Kombat reboot, but an internal changeover at Warner resulted in his pitch sitting on the shelf for years, eventually leading to Uziel becoming involved in the online short film, Mortal Kombat: Rebirth.

I have a long history with that Mortal Kombat project. It was kind of the first thing I got hired on. After Shimmer Lake went out around town I took a lot of meetings and one of the first job’s I got, and then ended up not getting, was to write Mortal Kombat for Warner Bros. But the guy who hired me exited the company before we even completed the paperwork. So it was like a job that existed and then disappeared, it was soul-crushing. But Kevin Tancharoen, who I guess was also trying to direct that movie before it went away, he called me and said, ‘Hey, would you be willing to write a short that I would shoot, because I think there’s something here, I think we can convince Warner Bros. to do it.’

But the screenwriter still has a strong affinity with the Mortal Kombat universe. When asked to describe his approach to the ultra-violent source material, Uziel likened his script to The Avengers in the sense that it revolves around an ensemble of superpowered individuals – the only difference being that MK would be rooted in a “hard-R, over-the-top violence” and “hard-edged” world that the franchise is famous for.

Well, and again I don’t know what remains of this, but I know that it was going to be—it’s almost like if you took The Avengers, or if you took a storyline like that and set it in a sort of hard-R, over-the-top violence and hard-edged world of Mortal Kombat. It was a little bit like that, it was a little bit like a Wanted-type story that brought together a bunch of these characters and just pulled zero punches, and had a tone that was still fun but very dark.

So, there you have it; Oren Uziel initially envisioned a no-holds-barred, Avengers-esque ensemble movie for Mortal Kombat, though exactly how much of that treatment will be carried over into Simon McQuoid’s feature film remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the screenwriter also had a hand in the aforementioned God Particle, which is expected to release as Cloverfield 3 this October.