Following the news that the release of Warner Bros.' upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot has been pushed back three months from January 15, 2021 to April 16, 2021, we have a first look at the video game adaptation courtesy of some official promo stills.
The images feature pretty much all of the main characters, including fan-favourite fighters such as Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Kano (Josh Lawson) as Kano, Jackson "Jax" Briggs (Mehcad Brooks), and Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion - but only in his Hanzo Hasashi guise!
We also get a first look at Lewis Tan, who is not playing Kung Lao (Max Huang will take on that role) as previously speculated, but a brand new lead character named Cole Young.
"When we first meet Cole, he's in a really bad spot," Tan says. "He's down on his luck. He's kind of a washed-up MMA fighter who used to be a champion, who used to believe in himself, who used to have a lot of hope in his career. And it's all gone down the drain. It's a very interesting place for a hero to start, and I think that, along the journey of Mortal Kombat and Cole discovering where he comes from, you're introduced to all these other iconic characters and elements that everybody loves so dearly."
You can check out the stills at the link below.
Mortal Kombat is most definitely going to be R-rated, and director Simon McQuoid confirms that we will see plenty of "gore, blood, and fatalities."
"It's definitely not gonna get a PG-13 rating. Out of context this quote might seem incendiary, it's not: The rules around ratings aren't what a lot of people think they are," he says. "It's amount of blood, it's amount of red, it's interpretation of how you go about it. We had a lot of discussions about getting the balance right so there was gore and there was blood and there were fatalities."
Mortal Kombat is set for a simultaneous release in theaters and on HBO Max this April 12. Keep an eye out for the trailer, which should be with us soon.