Mortal Kombat Movie Reboot Facing Legal Issues

[Austin MacKenzie]

Mortal Kombat Movie Reboot Facing Legal Issues

The Mortal Kombat franchise may see a new movie if it can clear some legal hurdles.

A new Mortal Kombat movie is on the way, assuming it can get past a few licensing issues. Warner Bros has been looking to reboot the franchise with a third movie, but have hit a bit of a snag in the form of Threshold Entertainment, who filed an injunction claiming that Warner Bros shut them out of the new movie's production.

Threshold still holds license rights to the Mortal Kombat movie franchise. The injunction cites an agreement Threshold made with Mortal Kombat creator Midway in 2006 to develop a third movie, but when Midway declared bankruptcy in 2009, Warner gained most of its holdings. The result is that each company has a legitimate stake in a Mortal Kombat movie: Threshold from the movie side and Warner Bros. from the game side.

Does this legal tiff spell the end of any possible Mortal Kombat reboot? Not necessarily. The lawsuit's primary claim is Warner Bros has shut Threshold out of development. Potentially, if Threshold is given a proper role in the development the movie can move forward. Until then, there are still the old Mortal Kombat movies lying around. With the quality of the original source material, they're sure to be just as good as they were fifteen years ago, right?

Source: <a href=http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/mortal-kombat-legal-tug-war-14324>The Wrap

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[The DSM]

The crimes are against Cinema, the other 2 mortal kombat movies where pure, unfiltered shite.

If its released it can ruture existance.

 

[Angron]

the old movies may have been poor, but i still want a new movie

the old ones were at least abit of fun, and if this is released you dont have to watch it...if you watch it its your loss

 

[Random Argument Man]

They didn't realize that it's pointless to make a movie about fighting games?

 

[Sephiwind]

The first movie wasn't all that bad, but the second was a giant turd, stuck on the bottom of my shoe. Honestly I think that there is potential of a good movie out of Mortal Kombat, and I think W.B. wants to use their own production company rather then the original company.

Besides that what was the last good movie Threshhold actually made... no seriously I can't think of one off the top of my head. Besides don't these contracts usualy have an expiration date? I can't imagine that Midway perminantly signed over the rights to their franchise for movie production.

 

[The_Shinigamer]

Honestly the best adaptaion I could think of for Mortal Kombat would be a Manga/Anime. It's a very serialized story per game and even per fight. It's a much better medium as everyone knows that you cannot have a resolution at the end of a movie adaptaion as 1 hour and a half movie couldn't contain most of the backlog of developed lore as well as the normal "cannon" of the first game. I enjoyed the first movie for just being what it was but the second one just cashed in a buttload of characters and the name for another go and didn't develop it enough. Mortal Kombat has more lore within it that almost any other game franchise (despite the "stories" being released mostly after the games in question) and that leaves a vast catalog of material to work from that any normal writer would beg to delve into to expand a popular universe.

Short version: Shut up and get along and take the time to make something fans and non-fans and even non-gamers will enjoy, even if they enjoy it for the wrong reason.

 

[dalek sec]

The first movie wasn't all that bad, but the second was a giant turd, stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about them as well, just leave us with the first one and we'll pretend the second movie was never made.

 

[DarkSaber]

Can't we just take this film series (and the game series for that matter) out back and shoot it already?

 

[Premonition]

Poor, poor, MK. Can't they just let you die in pieces?

 

[The Great JT]

Oh Mortal Kombat. Wasn't one sub-par action movie and one unmitigated piece of crap enough?

 

[Jared]

They didn't realize that it's pointless to make a movie about fighting games?

Apparantly not learned yet...

I really dont know if I want them to clear all the legal..means just another dissapointing film

 

[Green Tentacle]

It would've been great if they teamed up with DC and made some sort animated movie out of it to tie-in with MK Vs DC.

 

[VanityGirl]

Make it good. The first movie wasn't that bad, but the second one made me want to rip my eyes out.
If given enough love, a new Mortal Kombat movie could be freakin' awesome.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

[HEADING=1]FINISH IT![/HEADING]

Sorry, but no-one had made that quip already.

There's definite potential in there for a good movie if the writing on MK vs. DC was anything to go on. We just need them to leave off the cheap gimmicks and NOT redo The Legend of Chun Li.

I was SO hoping that was going to be good

 

[Sovvolf]

Well there's always potential to make a good movie here. The first movie was a decent flick if only they made a sequel. A reboot will have to suffice though to be honest if recent reboots (not counting the Platinum Dunes"are to go on then things can only be hopeful.

 

[tkioz]

just rip the spine out already, poor series has suffered enough.

 

[Gindil]

Honestly the best adaptaion I could think of for Mortal Kombat would be a Manga/Anime. It's a very serialized story per game and even per fight. It's a much better medium as everyone knows that you cannot have a resolution at the end of a movie adaptaion as 1 hour and a half movie couldn't contain most of the backlog of developed lore as well as the normal "cannon" of the first game. I enjoyed the first movie for just being what it was but the second one just cashed in a buttload of characters and the name for another go and didn't develop it enough. Mortal Kombat has more lore within it that almost any other game franchise (despite the "stories" being released mostly after the games in question) and that leaves a vast catalog of material to work from that any normal writer would beg to delve into to expand a popular universe.

Short version: Shut up and get along and take the time to make something fans and non-fans and even non-gamers will enjoy, even if they enjoy it for the wrong reason.

There was actually a comic during the MK heyday. It was pretty good. Went great with the SF comic that has since been turned into a manga.

Now the movie...

The first was not bad as mentioned. The second one tried to shoehorn everything into it. All of the characters ALL of their specials, when there was little to no pacing. If they had Motaro as the boss, with Shao Kahn, Sindel and Baraka's army in a third movie, they could have explored more of Outworld and given the second movie a better flow. Hell, if they had made Liu Kang the hero of MKII with Johnny Cage forming a team in Outworld, it probably would have done a lot better. As it stands, it suffered from sequelitis to the Nth degree.

 

[JaredXE]

Can part of this legal brawl/settlement be that Paul "Waste of Space" Anderson not be let within a mile of the filming?

Seriously?

Oh, and the first movie was decent...the second one was just shit.

 

[theultimateend]

The first movie wasn't all that bad, but the second was a giant turd, stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about them as well, just leave us with the first one and we'll pretend the second movie was never made.

I'll go with this. I was pretty young but I didn't have a bad time watching the first film.

It actually motivated me to exercise and get fairly fit .

 

[RJ Dalton]

They didn't realize that it's pointless to make a movie about fighting games?

Agreed. You really can't make a good movie based on a fighting game. There's just not any plot to a fighting game. I suppose you could take the characters and reimagine the scenario into something that has a plot, but if you're going to that much effort, it's probably better to just create your own, completely original movie and not get tangled up in legal issues.

And Mortal Kombat was never really that good of a fighting game to begin with.