It may have taken a lot longer than expected for the official announcement to be made, but fans breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was confirmed late last month that a Mortal Kombat sequel was in active development.
Critics weren’t particularly sold on the video game reboot, but based on an 86% user rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the fact it scored the most-watched opening weekend of 2021 on HBO Max, it would be fair to say that a lot of people are looking forward to immersing themselves back into the violent fantasy martial arts universe.
Mortal Kombat didn’t skimp on its R-rating, delivering a string of brutal fatalities ripped straight from the source material, and it sounds as though the second installment is poised to up the ante significantly. Speaking to Film Updates, star Lewis Tan teased a bigger, bloodier return to Earthrealm.
“We got an amazing writer, Jeremy Slater, who wrote Moon Knight for Marvel, onboard. His writing is really good and he’s really smart. I’m excited to see what he develops, because it’s a tricky one with Mortal Kombat. There are so many storylines. It’s very complex; there are so many characters. It’s a hard one to get done in a two-hour period or an hour and a half. Hopefully, they can make the sequel a little bit longer and we can explore more characters and more themes, and just make it even bloodier and even bigger than the first one. That’s our plan.”
Some folks were upset that Mortal Kombat didn’t actually feature the titular tournament, but we’d feel confident in saying that will almost certainly be rectified in the next chapter of the story. Tan’s Cole Young was admittedly a pretty weak protagonist, but with the world-building and setup out of the way, the sequel has laid the groundwork for even more insanity.
