Mortal Kombat II was supposed to come out last year. Then, at a certain point, Warner Bros. looked at the film and realized two things. One, the film had the potential to be a big summer blockbuster, and two, they wanted to start working on another one. Yes, the studio was so happy with Mortal Kombat II that it brought back the film’s writer, Jeremy Slater, to write Mortal Kombat III long before Part II’s release, and work is well underway.
“I finished a really early draft that was kind of a throw-everything-at-the-wall draft and see what sticks, which is kind of what my process was on part two as well,” Slater told io9 over video chat this week. “And then we have a great creative brain trust between me, Dave Neustadter at New Line, and producer Todd Garner, and the three of us really kind of put our heads together and kind of look at like, ‘Okay, well, what’s good about this?’”
But, Slater explained, all of that was happening as Mortal Kombat II was still awaiting release. Now, fans are starting to see the film, react to it, and that has allowed him and the producers to make the next installment even better.
“For a very long time, I’ve been writing and developing Mortal Kombat III sort of in a vacuum. And now that fans are seeing it and responding to it, we can see tonally what’s working. We can see, in terms of the characters, who are they responding to, [and] who are they going to want to see more of in a part three,” he said.
Armed with that knowledge, Slater is currently “about two-thirds of the way” through a “finished draft” and is using the positive response from Part II in making Part III even better. “In the same way that we took the lessons from one to make two even better, I want to take the lessons from two and make three the best one yet,” he said. “That is the ultimate goal. But, you know, all of these decisions are ultimately out of my hands. My job isn’t to make a good movie. It’s to give the filmmakers all the tools they need to make an incredible movie. So I am happy to be a part of this universe for as long as they will have me.”
Mortal Kombat II opens on May 8. We’ll have a review and more from Slater next week.
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