"The Raid" and
"Fast & Furious 6" actor
Joe Taslim has signed on to star in New Line Cinema's upcoming
"Mortal Kombat" movie. The reboot will be directed by first-time feature film helmer
Simon McQuoid from a script by
Greg Russo.
Taslim, a veteran of the Indonesian national judo team, will play iconic ninja Sub-Zero, one of the original characters of the video game franchise created by Midway, along with Johnny Cage, Kano, Liu Kang, Raiden, Scorpion, Sonya Blade, Goro, Shang Tsung, and Reptile.
The last game in the series,
"Mortal Kombat 11" was released in April and it became the most successful launch in franchise history. The entire video game franchise is closing in on a total of $50 million copies sold. Warner Bros. acquired Midway's assets in 2009 in bankruptcy court and began developing a reboot in 2011 with
Kevin Tancharoen attached to direct. The project eventually fell through three years later.
There have been two previous big screen adaptations,
Paul W.S. Anderson's 1995 cult classic of the same name that grossed $122 million worldwide, and a sequel in 1997,
"Mortal Kombat: Annihilation", which was directed by cinematographer
John R. Leonetti.
"Mortal Kombat" will be produced by
"The Conjuring" helmer
James Wan and
Todd Garner, while
Larry Kasanoff, E. Bennett Walsh, Michael Clear and
Sean Robins are on board as executive producers.
Filming is expected to begin later this year in southern Australia. The release date has been set for March 5, 2021.