Mortal Kombat 2 director Simon McQuoid says working closely with NetherRealm and franchise co-creator Ed Boon made for a much better production process this time around.
“Ed was part of this, the second film, from the get-go, and it actually made the creative process a lot easier and more satisfying,” McQuoid tells GamesRadar+. “And the more I got to know Ed, it just became more fun. He’s such a lovely guy, and he’s just a good guy to hang with. And we had these really good creative conversations that… to be able to just go to the master and ask, ‘So what, why is this… Why did you do it that way?’
“And then sometimes he’d give quite a sort of detailed explanation of like, ‘Okay, well, it came from here, and it started there.’ And then other times I’d say, ‘So why did you do that?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, we just thought it’d be cool.’ We were always on sort of strong footing. There was no guesswork. It was just kind of like, ‘Oh, well, we’ll ask Ed.’ And his creative director and storywriter, [Dominic Cianciolo]. He was great, too. So the two of them together were just really, really helpful.”
Mortal Kombat was created by Ed Boon and John Tobias as part of Midway Games, now NetherRealm, in 1992. Despite being owned by Warner Brothers Games, NetherRealm wasn’t directly involved with the first Mortal Kombat movie, which was distributed by Warner Bros. in 2021. Some fans thought this was strange, given that Boon worked so closely with the original 1995 and 1997 film adaptations that he even provided the voice of Scorpion.
Mortal Kombat 2 screenwriter Jeremy Slater previously said that one of the first film’s biggest mistakes was the lack of involvement from NetherRealm, and that they plan to have the studio’s involvement in every film going forward. A third movie was announced at New York City Comic Con back in October 2025, though there hasn’t been much news since then. McQuoid tells GR+ he wants the second film to have a life on digital and streaming before he starts work on a third movie. It’s exciting to know that Boon will still be directly involved, given that he and McQuoid seem to be so in sync.
“As an example, Cappi Ireland, the costume designer… we were sort of chatting about what Johnny was gonna wear in Uncaged Fury,” McQuoid continues. “And obviously there’s a lot of, through the history of what Johnny’s worn over things, there’s a lot of different things he wears and different options you have in the game, and we’ve seen him in different things.
“Cappi was like, ‘What do you think about this crazy-looking thing?’ And I was like, ‘I think that that’s good. It sort of has a classic-ness to it, and it’s certainly a favorite of those who play the game.’ So there was this whole conversation, and I said, ‘well, what I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna ask Ed to email me what he thinks Johnny should wear, and I’ll, I’m gonna say to him, ‘I’ll email you at the same time, and then tomorrow when I come in, we’ll see what we both said to each other.’ It was like, ‘Let’s flip it over.’ He emailed me the same costume, and I emailed him the same costume.”
Mortal Kombat 2 is out on 4K and Blu-ray disc from July 28. For a deeper dive into the movie, check out our Mortal Kombat 2 ending explained, or look ahead with our list of upcoming video game movies.
