Get ready, Mortal Kombat fans! Power Rangers‘ Ludi Lin may be your next Liu Kang!
While movie studios have built successful franchises out of comic books, YA novels and even one or two toy lines, movies based on video games have never done particularly well at the box office.
However, that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from trying, with the latest attempt at a successful video game-to-movie adaptation being Mortal Kombat.
New Line had two previous attempts to bring the popular video game to the big screen — 1995’s delightfully campy Mortal Kombat and its 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Though neither was very popular with critics, together they still grossed close to $200 million on a combined $50 million budget.
While the movie franchise fizzled out, the game franchise has been going strong, with a new Mortal Kombat game released once every few years — and one out this year. The enduring popularity of the game pushed New Line and Warner Bros. to try again with a film franchise, with the studio recently announcing a 2021 release for a rebooted film.
Joe Taslim, known for his work on The Raid: Redemption, had previously been announced as Sub-Zero. And, according to a new report from Variety, it looks like Ludi Lin may join him as Liu Kang.
In the Mortal Kombat games, Liu Kang is a Shaolin monk best known for his flying kicks (and a passing resemblance to Bruce Lee).
Chinese-Canadian actor Ludi Lin was born in Fuzhou, China, but spent much of his schooling abroad in boarding schools in Australia and eventually emigrated to Canada. He studied Muay Thai in Thailand, as well as Jiu-Jitsu and Olympic style wrestling. Along with playing the Black Ranger in the 2017 Power Rangers reboot, Lin was also in Aquaman and made appearances in Netflix’s Black Mirror episode, “Striking Vipers.”
The upcoming 2021 Mortal Kombat film will be directed by Simon McQuaid and produced by James Wan.
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