As soon as Ryan Reynolds acknowledged the support from Mortal Kombat fans to see him play Johnny Cage and used it to his advantage by promoting his Mint Mobile service being named as 2021’s best cellphone plan by U.S. News & World Report, it was inevitable that talk would begin circulating about the actor showing up in the flesh to portray the beloved video game character.
The very last shot of Simon McQuoid’s reboot set the console franchise’s resident Hollywood star up for a major role in the sequel, and there’ve been several candidates floated already, including James Marsden. Reynolds is one of the least likely, though, given his jam-packed schedule that sees him with four movies in the can awaiting release over the next year, and another eight having been officially announced or lingering in various stages of development.
However, that hasn’t stopped insider Daniel Richtman from reporting that the producers of Mortal Kombat have already approached the actor about showing up in the sequel. Of course, the box office and HBO Max smash hit cost $55 million to make and Reynolds pocketed at least $25 million for both Netflix’s 6 Underground and Red Notice, so it’s unlikely that Warner Bros. would even be willing or able to pay him what he’d want, but everyone loves a trier.
That being said, in addition to the twelve projects he’s definitely got in the works, Richtman has also linked Reynolds with Black Adam , Jumanji 3, a Netflix Sherlock Holmes movie, Hasbro’s M.A.S.K., sequels to Van Wilder, The Adam Project and The Proposal, a Pirates of the Caribbean spinoff, a live-action Disney fairytale, Adam Wingard’s ThunderCats, The Mandalorian and a superhero musical comedy over the last few months alone, so it’s best not to read too much into the continuing Mortal Kombat speculation just yet.
