'Mortal Kombat 1' Creator Reveals the Star They Couldn't Get for the Video Game

Ed Boon is opening up about the latest installment of Mortal Kombat.

The co-creator of the massive video game franchise got candid in a new interview about the making of the latest iteration, Mortal Kombat 1, the second “timeline reboot” for the series after 2011’s Mortal Kombat, which features superstars like Megan Fox and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Now, the creator is revealing one big star who he wanted to get in the game, but couldn’t.

Keep reading to find out more…

When asked by Rolling Stone about the influences of Mortal Kombat, pointing out its heavy
’70s and ’80s action cinema references, Ed spoke about modern cinematic influences as well.

“When we were making Mortal Kombat (1992), the whole team was in the midst of Bloodsport, Enter the Dragon, and all the Terminator movies,” he explained.

“I could certainly see the John Wicks of the world… as a matter of fact, that is one of the ones that we tried to get – John Wick – in Mortal Kombat, and we didn’t get it,” he confirmed of the Keanu Reeves character.

“One of the things that I entertained with this game – and this is the 10 out of 10 version – which we didn’t do, was, ‘What if every character in this game was played by an actor?’ Like we got Keanu Reeves to play Kenshi,” he went on to say.

“This is, like, pipe dream. We’re not even thinking of their salaries and all that stuff. What if we made a game that had an actor, a famous, recognizable actor play every character and Johnny Cage was absolutely the one who would have been played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. So, the thought did come to us. But at some point, I don’t know if he would have wanted to do motion-capture work, or if he [says], ‘Just scan my face and have somebody else do all the whatever stuff.’ There are hundreds of lines of dialogue that they have to read. A lot of actors don’t realize just how sophisticated video games are. When you sign up for it, you’re not just signing up to go in one day, be in the recording studio for an hour, and you’re done. It’s like a real acting job.”

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