Writer/Director Oren Uziel Talks His R-Rated, ‘Avengers’-Esque Take On ‘Mortal Kombat’

You might have forgotten that Paul W.S. Anderson‘s 1995 video game adaptation “Mortal Kombat” opened at number one at the box office and went on to earn over $120 million worldwide. Still, the movie isn’t quite revered more than two decades later,and there has been persistent chatter about booting up a new big screen version. Just last fall, commercial director Simon McQuoid became linked to the project, but there has been radio silence since then. However, he’s not the only name that has been attached.

For a while, Oren Uziel (“22 Jump Street,” Netflix‘s “Shimmer Lake“) was set to write the script, and while that iteration went away, it was a pretty ambitious concept. But as it so often goes in Hollywood, there were a lot bumps and detours on the road.

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“I have a long history with that ‘Mortal Kombat’ project. It was the first thing I ever got hired on. After ‘Shimmer Lake’ went out and around the town, I took a lot of meetings. One of the first jobs I got, and then ended up didn’t getting, was to write ‘Mortal Kombat’ for Warner Brothers,” Uziel told Collider. “The guys who hired me exited the company before we even could complete the paperwork, so it was a job that existed and then disappeared. It was soul crushing. Kevin Tancharoen, who was also trying to direct that movie when everything went away, he had just directed the ‘Fame‘ remake. He’s a very cool young director. He called me and said, ‘Hey, would you be willing to write a short that I would shoot, cause I think there’s something here. I think we can convince one of those to do it.’ I ended up writing a short for him that he shot. It became kind of a big thing. I know he used that to convince Machinima to make the digital series, which I didn’t have anything to do with. After a couple years of that, New Line came on board to actually make a feature version again. It was at that point that Kevin called and New Line called and they said, ‘Hey, you were there at the beginning, do you want to come back?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ so I wrote them a feature that has been the basis of what the ‘Mortal Kombat’ movie will be, but it’s been kicking around for a little while now.”

As for Uziel’s take, perhaps it’s understandable why it didn’t get an immediate greenlight.

“It’s been a while so it’s hard to sum up quickly. It’s almost like if you took ‘The Avengers,’ of if you took a storyline like that, but set it in a hard R, over the top violence and [the] hard-edged world of ‘Mortal Kombat.’ It was a little bit like that. It was a little bit of that ‘Wanted‘-type story that brought together a bunch of these characters and pulled zero punches. It had a tone that was still fun, but very dark,” he said.

Video game adaptations are risky as it is, so I can understand why WB didn’t exactly rush to make an R-rated “Mortal Kombat.” We’ll see what direction the new version takes (if it gets made).