According to reports from The Wrap, the upcoming sequel to 2021’s hugely successful Mortal Kombat film will bring fan-favourite character Johnny Cage into the fold, and New Zealand actor Karl Urban is tapped to play the role.
Urban, known for his roles in Amazon’s The Boys, The Lord of the Rings and the severely underrated Dredd, is reportedly in final talks to portray Johnny Cage, who was teased in the first film’s post-credits sequence.
The follow-up Mortal Kombat film will once again be directed by Australian filmmaker, Simon McQuoid. The first film was made right here in Australia, in Adelaide, and featured a cast with a fair few Aussie names including Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson and Nathan Jones. The sequel is beginning production locally again, with filming reportedly starting in June and continuing through to September.
Earlier in the year, Moon Knight Season 1 head writer, Jeremy Slater, spoke to The Direct, revealing that he’d been hired by Warner Bros. to pen the script for Mortal Kombat 2, saying “I don’t think it’s necessarily going to have the same tone as the MCU, but it’s definitely going to have some of my sensibilities. That was part of my pitch to them. This is ‘Mortal Kombat.’ We have guys who are ripping off their faces and breathing fire—it’s a weird universe, let’s embrace some of that weirdness, and let’s make a ‘Mortal Kombat ‘sequel that no one is expecting and that can kind of sneak in and blow everyone away. We’re still really early in that process, but I’m having a blast with this script.”
Mortal Kombat (2021) was a breakout hit for Warner Bros. during the pandemic times, becoming one of the top titles on HBO Max (and the equivalent streaming services worldwide) at the time, so the sequel is an inevitable and hopefully similarly successful prospect.
Recently, series creator Ed Boon also teased the next sequel in Mortal Kombat video game series, which you can read about here.
