New Line to Remake ‘Mortal Kombat’ Movie

With a few recent hires, New Line Cinema is showing it is serious about rebooting Mortal Kombat on the big screen.

The studio has signed a deal with Kevin Tancharoen, who directed both the Fame remake and Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. But before you can say “he directed what?” Tancharoen also directed an eye-catching eight-minute short film titled Mortal Kombat: Rebirth (embedded below) that starred Michael Jai White as Jax and, Jeri Ryan as Sonya Blade, among others as Johnny Cage, Scorpion, and Baraka.

It was intended as a “proof of concept” pitch to New Line, owned by Warner Bros (which bought Midway Games in May 2009 after the company filed for bankruptcy). While WB didn’t greenlight to a feature film from the short — in fact, they were upset by it until they saw the buzz the unauthorized spec generated — the studio did slide the idea over to WB Digital Distribution, who locked him in for a 10-episode web series based in the video game world of mortals in brutal “kombat.”

Oren Uziel, who wrote “Rebirth,” is returning to pen the feature-length script, according toDeadline. I was rather disappointed in his Black List script The Kitchen Sink (thoughts here), which Jonah Hill may make his directorial debut, but Uziel seems to have won fans with his gritty interpretation of the classic fighting games, so maybe this won’t be a disaster.

WB’s Mortal Kombat movie in 1995 was, though, and 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilationonly made it worse. While the proposed reboot will have nothing to do with the previous two, or the web series, can Tancharoen overcome the stigma surrounding the movie series and video game movies in general? Or will this be another campy fighting flick like its predecessors and other laughable attempts at adaptation, like Street Fighter?