Mortal Kombat Sequel Officially Underway

It looks like Mortal Kombat is gearing up for Round 2 at the box office.

Deadline reports that a sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat is officially underway, and New Line has hired Moon Knight writer Jeremy Slater to pen the script. The report doesn’t say if director Simon McQuoid will be coming back to helm the sequel. Producer Todd Garner did share this on Twitter:

This… pic.twitter.com/9KvcMNoxvN

— Todd Garner (@Todd_Garner) January 26, 2022

While the Mortal Kombat movie certainly isn’t perfect, there are several things that they got right. For one, the fights look fantastic, and you really get the gross-out violence that is reminiscent of the games’ infamous fatalities. Not to mention characters’ special abilities are beautifully rendered with CG.

When it comes to story though, that’s where things get kind of weak. Instead of embracing the B-movie feel of the video games, the movie kind of took itself too seriously, and it doesn’t help that new character Cole Young isn’t really that likeable. The explanation for how the characters each gain their abilities is also kind of clumsy—but that’s just really my opinion.

Hopefully this sequel will finally give us the tournament storyline that fans are familiar with, and maybe we can watch Ludi Lin’s Liu Kang take the spotlight. There are still several other fan favorites we’ve yet to meet (like Johnny Cage), so this sequel should give us some more familiar faces. Hopefully the films run long enough to introduce us to one of video games’ most notorious villains, Shao Khan.

No release date has been set for the Mortal Kombat sequel.