MORTAL KOMBAT Screenwriter Discusses the Challenges of Creating the Story and Juggling a Lot of Different Characters

Thanks to screenwriter Greg Russo, we have some some new insight to share with you on the Mortal Kombat film that he’s working on with producer James Wan at Warner Bros. He says that we will see “a lot of familiar faces” in the film, and also talks about the challenges of developing a story for the film while juggling so many characters. They don’t want to cram a bunch of them in the film for the sake of cramming them it.

"Yeah. You know the characters are ... One of the trickiest things I think with adapting the properties are there are so many characters, right. I mean there are, I think there's 70 something characters in this and we don't have the ability to stagger these films like the MCU does, right? We can't do a Sonya movie and then do a Liu Kang movie. So we're forced right into Avengers mode off the bat. So when that happens from a story perspective, you're naturally going to have to juggle a lot of different characters, and you realize very soon that you only have so much room in, what's hopefully, story one. I mean we only -- our mantra as the team behind this movie is always kind of, movie one first, you know, let's just make that great. Let's not think about anything else."

Russo went on to about one of the hardest aspects about writing the script for the film, saying:

"So you only have so much room. And what one of the hardest things has been from a writing standpoint is saying, okay, who makes sense for this first film? And who makes more sense for what would be maybe a subsequent chapter of this world? Because once you really get into it, you realize that... I guess what I should say is, I don't think anybody wants to turn this into a, actually, let me back up and say this. I think a lesson we learned from Annihilation, the second film, is the more you try to cram into a movie, the more characters you try to cram in, I think they end up just getting lost and they feel like they're just thrown in for no reason. And that was something that we really wanted to avoid."

It seems like they are on the right track with how to approach the film… story first. All the characters they want to use will fall into place naturally and properly as they do that. There’s no need to cram in a bunch of characters. They need to give the characters that they do use room to grow and shine over the course of the movie.

The writer went on to say many of our favorite character will appear in the film, but if you don’t see one of your favorites, don’t worry, they are being saved for the sequel!

"If we're going to put characters into this, we want to make sure that they had a chance to really be developed, that they're fleshed out, and that they play a real role in the story. So that's kind of, in terms of the characters, that was, in terms of the actual choosing of the characters, it's just gonna be a lot of familiar faces for sure. Everyone, I think most of the characters that you know and love will hopefully will get in there. If a character is not in there, it's because it was kind of decided that it's better off saved for a later point where they can actually really shine and be developed appropriately."

Mortal Kombat is set to be released on March 5, 2021.

Source: CB