News Archive - August 2015

The guys at Midway showed Kasanoff Mortal Kombat, a new game they said would beat his T2 record. It was bloody, hyper-realistic and already a sensation at the arcade. But Kasanoff believed it was destined to be more than just a video game. He envisioned it as a phenomenon on the order of T2. He saw a TV series, stage shows, albums and movies all in its future.

Midway wasn't so sure.

"YOU'RE FULL OF CRAP! IT'S JUST AN ARCADE GAME!"
Kasanoff: Everyone was telling me this wouldn't work and my career would be over. Including New Line. They'd already greenlighted the movie, and the studio head walked in with the script, threw it down on the table and said, "I hate the script. I hate this movie." And he yelled at us for an hour and then said, "Go ahead and make it."
Anderson: The script was kind of being written while we were in preproduction, which is a challenging thing, but it was a good thing, because it gave me the opportunity to help steer the direction. When it came to actually shooting the movie, I really encouraged the actors to ad lib quite a lot. It was a lot of the humor in the movie. There's a lot of good humor, especially coming form Linden Ashby [Johnny Cage] and Christopher Lambert [Raiden].

Linden Ashby, Johnny Cage: We came up with, "Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole," and the silly moment in the movie, the opening when I walk in and I go, "Let's dance."
Boon: [Fellow Mortal Kombat co-creator] John [Tobias] and I had comments about the script because I remember at first, from our perspective, it was way too comical. Raiden was cracking jokes like a prankster, and I remember saying, "He's not a clown, he's a very serious character." We didn't write the script, but we read the script and we sent back comments.
Apelian: We originally had Cameron Diaz cast as Sonya Blade. We were at New Line when The Mask was in postproduction, and Cameron Diaz was not a household name. No one knew her. New Line said, "Why don't you look some of the dailies that are coming in from this film and see what you think of this young, unknown actress." As soon as we saw the dailies from The Mask, there was no question that she was a star. We put her into training, because she had not really done this kind of martial arts work before. She broke her wrist right before shooting to the point where she couldn't do the martial arts stunts we needed. We were very happy with Bridgette [Wilson-Sampras]. It was great she was available.