It’s been 19 years since Midway released the very first Mortal Kombat in arcades. Since then, the series has had eight distinct fighting games, two adventure games, two movies, a cartoon, a live-action television series, a music album, a novel, a card game, and several comic book series.
In June of last year, a proof-of-concept short film entitled Mortal Kombat: Rebirth was shot on a small budget and released on the web. The resulting fan reaction convinced Warner Bros to move forward with a larger web series entitled Mortal Kombat: Legacy, which premiered earlier this week. Series co-creator Ed Boon told Joystiq that he’s glad to see the franchise expand back into other media.
"To me it's almost like an emotional introduction back into Mortal Kombat," said Boon. "It taps into a lot of people's seeing the first movies, playing the first games, and that whole part of their life that seems very defined by Mortal Kombat."
"I'd love it if this was the first of a number of things that we can do with Kevin and Warner Brothers in terms of bringing Mortal Kombat to other media; whether it's live-action shorts like this, another feature film would be great, and of course future video games as well.”
Depending on how the new Mortal Kombat game and Mortal Kombat: Legacy perform, we could see another MK explosion like the late '90s. Are you ready? Mortal Kombat is scheduled to hit stores April 19, 2011, on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Mortal Kombat: Legacy’s first episode can be found on Machinima.com’s Youtube Channel.
