Mortal Kombat is an American series of martial arts action films based on the fighting video game series of the same name by Midway Games. The first film was produced by Lawrence Kasanoff’s Threshold Entertainment. The first film, Mortal Kombat, was released in 1995 and its sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was released in 1997. After the two films, game publisher Midway filed for bankruptcy. Warner Bros., having become the parent of New Line Cinema in 2008 (after over a decade of both operating as separate divisions of Time Warner), made a bid to purchase most of Midway’s assets, including Mortal Kombat. In June 2009, Kasanoff and Threshold sued in bankruptcy court, arguing that they owned the copyright to many of the characters from the series.
On July 1, 2009, the bankruptcy court approved the sale of most of Midway’s assets to Warner Bros. subject to the intellectual property claims of Threshold Entertainment. After years of development hell, a reboot of the series was released in April 2021
It is now seemingly common place to adapt a vastly popular video game into live-action. However, that was not always the case. Prior to adaptations like The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros, Warner Bros. took a swing with the popular video game franchise, Mortal Kombat and delivered a decent outing in 2021. The film’s success prompted the studio to take on the challenge of a sequel with Mortal Kombat 2, which is set for a 2025 release. After two previous attempts at live-action, the 2021 edition of Mortal Kombat became the third, and the best-received out of the trio of releases. However, the film was not without its criticisms, one of which was its fight scenes. Luckily enough, there seems to be a drive to improve in that regard in the coming sequel.
