Simon McQuoid’s Mortal Kombat reboot went to great lengths when it came to distancing itself from Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 cult classic, in that it took a much more serious approach to the source material and deliberately omitted the titular tournament so that it didn’t follow the exact same narrative template, but if the avalanche of rumors to have sprung up in the wake of the movie’s success are to be believed, then the next outing might well end up walking a very similar path.
Anderson’s Mortal Kombat was followed by animated prequel The Journey Begins, which was released on home video shortly after the film debuted, with theatrical sequel Annihilation arriving two years later. Animated series Defenders of the Realm also ran for one season in 1996, as did the live-action Conquest, although those plans for a massive multimedia franchise didn’t exactly work out as the studio no doubt hoped.
Insider Daniel Richtman is now reporting, though, that Warner Bros. are developing Mortal Kombat animated movies set in the same universe and timeline as the reboot, presumably in the hopes that HBO Max will serve as the ideal platform to continue building out the mythology, which WB believes can eventually rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Naturally, it’s best not to take this latest bout of speculation as gospel quite yet, especially when the Mortal Kombat rumor mill has been throwing up such wild claims as Robert Pattinson’s Batman pitching up in Outworld and Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam charging into battle as part of a DCEU crossover, but at the very least, we know that the recent box office success is destined to be just the opening salvo from the resurgent property.
