MOVIE NEWS – Christopher Lambert, who played Raiden in the Original Mortal Kombat told the press that a sequel will be made instead of a reboot “that will change the franchise forever”.

There were rumors about Mortal Kombat being rebooted as a movie franchise, but now one of the actors from the original 1995 big screen video game adaptation says that we’ll get a sequel instead. Though, it will arrive with a big twist. Hollywood has always had a tough time cracking the code on video game movies, but it hasn’t been for a lack of trying.

One of the earliest attempts at this was the first Mortal Kombat live-action movie. As it turns out, there is apparently still a chance that, after nearly 20 years, a third installment of the original film series may be on the way. And it sounds like it will be ridiculous.

Christopher Lambert, who played in the first Mortal Kombat movie, recently spoke about the long-rumored reboot/sequel, which is stuck in development hell. While speaking with Loaded, the actor claimed that he is in talks to reprise his role as Raiden in a third Mortal Kombat movie and that it will be quite a bit different than the first two. Yes, it will also introduce inter-dimensional time travel to the mix.

“They have a very good idea for the third one. It will be very different. We are going to be traveling through time but in a very particular way. So imagine characters having a battle in the middle of London and then whoosh, you smash through a window and find yourself on the hood of a New York cab,” told Lambert.

New Line Cinema originally wanted to return to the Mortal Kombat franchise back in 2011, and at the time it sounded like it would be a flat out reboot. They also tapped The Conjuring director James Wan to produce the movie last year, with a script from Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street) and Dave Callaham (Godzilla). It looks like with Lambert being involved, they will be doing something of a soft reboot, and that also could be how the time travels element factors into the movie.

Lambert was very frank in his interview, and he told that he didn’t signed up for the sequel to the first movie, entitled Mortal Kombat: Annihilation because he didn’t think the script was excellent. He also told that he did like the first one. Unlike a lot of games, Mortal Kombat doesn’t have much of a narrative, and that was a challenge that needed to be addressed in the original movies. The actor goes on to say this.

“Mortal Kombat was an arcade game, a beat’em up and because of that they were forced to create a story rather than just relying on the game’s plot.”

There has been some truly awful video game to movie adaptations, and Annihilation is one of them. But strangely enough, the first Mortal Kombat movie wasn’t that bad as far as video game adaptations goes. It is certainly cheesy, and the effects don’t hold up at all, but it is easy to see how they could take that template, update it a bit and use modern effects to get it right. But the whole strange time travel thing they seemingly have come up with may already be a bit of a signal that the concept for Mortal Kombat 3 is straight up off the rails. That could also be quite fun as well, so that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The first Mortal Kombat made $122 million back in 1995, which isn’t bad money given what was considered to be a solid box office performance at the time. That may be the year that video game movies finally find their footing. The Angry Birds Movie and Warcraft have both managed to make good money, with Warcraft becoming the highest grossing video game movie ever at this point. Though critical acclaim is still something that alludes these adaptations. Assassin’s Creed could break that trend later this year, but if that succeeds as well, pretty much every studio will be jumping on the video game adaptation train. That is maybe why New Line is moving ahead with Mortal Kombat 3, but we’ll have to see if it actually comes to pass.