Mortal Kombat reboot targets Simon McQuoid as director

Simon McQuoid is looking for a fight. The Australian director is in talks to helm New Line’s Mortal Kombat reboot, EW has confirmed.

Known for his work in commercials, McQuoid would help put a new spin on the franchise about warriors who are summoned from across the globe to join a martial arts tournament that determines the fate of Earthrealm. Originating with a violent 1992 arcade game, the Mortal Kombat series has spawned two feature films, a slew of videogames, two TV series (one animated, one live-action), and an instantly recognizable theme song.

Nearly two decades have passed since Mortal Kombat: Annihilation underwhelmed at the box office, and New Line has been mulling a new movie for several years.

Among the producers of the reboot is Furious 7 and Insidious director James Wan, who told IGN in August that the project is “still cooking away.”

A longtime Mortal Kombat fan, Wan added, “I love the characters. I think they’re such colorful characters. It’s such an amazing take on, basically, Enter the Dragon [the Bruce Lee movie]. … They ended up creating such interesting characters, and I think that is such a cool world to explore. This really mythical, bigger world that lives on another dimension on top of ours. I think that’s really fun to play with, and so we’ll see.”

Variety first reported the news about McQuoid.