Mortal Kombat screenwriter says reboot will feature fatalities for the first time

Yes, the new Mortal Kombat movie, produced by Aquaman's James Wan, will definitely be R-rated. How R-rated? Screenwriter Greg Russo confirmed Thursday night that, for the first time ever, the franchise will feature fatalities on the big screen.

"Since it's already been stated by other members of the team, I'm gonna put this one to bed. MK WILL be R-Rated and for the first time EVER, FATALITIES will FINALLY be on the big screen (and no I'm not gonna say which ones)," Russo tweeted. "You'll just have to wait for the movie & see!!! ;)."

Fatalities, as anyone who's ever played one of the videogames will know, is a staple of Mortal Kombat. They are dramatic (and always gruesome) finishing moves a player can activate as a finale execution. In Mortal Kombat 11, the most recent game installment released this year, the fatality for Sub-Zero involves the character freezing his opponent in a block of ice, severing their head with an ice axe, and then freezing the head so he can shatter it.

As it happens, we already know Joe Taslim of The Raid: Redemption and The Night Comes For Us will star as Sub-Zero in the new Mortal Kombat film, directed by Simon McQuoid.

Official plot details aren't currently known, but producer Todd Garner teased what they're going for on Collider Live back in June.

"It's very R rated and it's much more like the game," he said. "You can't ignore that there's a Mortal Kombat 11. To be clear, we're not remaking the 1995 movie and we're not doing the storyline that's in Mortal Kombat 11 because there's been a whole universe. It's like comic books. So we're going back and looking at some of the older storylines and some of the mythology, being very very very very aware of each character's origin, their nationality, being very sensitive to that, being authentic to that."

"By the time this movie comes out the game will have another iteration. And so there's new characters and things like that that we're gonna introduce," he further teased. "We're trying to take all of it into consideration."

Mortal Kombat, which starts filming later this year in Australia, is scheduled to hit theaters on March 5, 2021. Larry Kasanoff, E. Bennett Walsh, Michael Clear, and Sean Robins will executive produce.

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