Mortal Kombat 2021's director is returning for the sequel

The 2021 Mortal Kombat film is getting a sequel, and the production is reportedly pushing forward with returning director Simon McQuoid.

New Line Cinema wants to get the sequel going after the original outperformed expectations at the box office and on HBO Max, as Deadline reports. According to Deadline's sources, McQuoid is already set to return as the sequel's director. The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie was McQuoid's first feature film. He'd previously directed commercials, including work on numerous video game ads.

Word of a Mortal Kombat sequel first landed earlier this year with reports that Jeremy Slater would be writing the screenplay. Slater previously wrote the 2015 Fantastic Four film and the 2017 live-action Death Note adaptation. Somewhat more auspiciously, his recent credits include creating the Netflix adaptation of The Umbrella Academy and Disney Plus's Moon Knight.

Despite the box office success, Mortal Kombat got largely negative reviews from critics. GamesRadar+'s own Jack Shepherd gave it two out of five stars, saying that the movie's "great fights" could not outweigh its "terrible characters".

Slater said earlier this year that the movie's creators "definitely learned some lessons the last time around in terms of, ‘Here’s the stuff fans responded to, and here’s what people liked out of the movie, and here’s the stuff that didn’t work out as well as we hoped.’"

The best fighting games have been surprisingly fertile ground for film adaptations over the years.