'Mortal Kombat' Director Talks Johnny Cage & Sequel Plans

The new movie Mortal Kombat is out now and the film’s director Simon McQuoid is opening up about his possible plans for a sequel.

The popular character Johnny Cage is not featured in the movie, but a moment in the final scene teases that he might be the focus of a sequel.

“Sequels are a bit tricky because you can’t totally ignore them, because that wouldn’t be a smart move, but none of us used the ‘s-word.’ We’d never talk about it in any depth whatsoever because we feel like we have to put all our energy into this film. That being said, if the fans want another one, that’s not for us to decide; that’s for the fans to decide,” Simon told Variety. “Then, we need a couple of joiner pieces that we know can lead us somewhere because there’s a treasure trove of stuff that’s just sitting there.”

Click inside to find out what he said about Johnny Cage…

“The reason [Johnny Cage] is not in this original film is he’s such a giant personality that he almost has his own gravitational field. The feeling was that he would throw it out of balance slightly,” he added. “I get asked about Kitana just as much as Johnny Cage. There’s a lot of interesting characters, story and material to work with. So we haven’t really dug into it; we just know we’re very privileged that’s sitting there. If we do get to that, and I’m not saying we will, I’m just saying if — big ‘if’ — then we’ll go down that path.”

Simon also spoke about the other character he’d want to include in a potential sequel.

“I guess I’d like to shift it to be a little more female. There are some fantastic female characters in Mortal Kombat. And I think we can bring balance there, to a better extent,” he said. “There were no other specific characters we really wanted to put in. Very early on, there was a scene with Rain, but he wasn’t being done justice and wasn’t driving the story forward. That’s a reason he got put back on the bench. There are a lot of characters to choose from. I’ve been so busy trying to calibrate this ensemble that I haven’t thought too much about any others beyond just understanding who people really love, who gets talked about a lot and who are really interesting characters.”

See all of the great actors who are featured in the Mortal Kombat cast.