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'Mortal Kombat': Untold Story of the Movie That "Kicked the Hell" Out of Everyone

The film — which broke the videogame curse 20 years ago this week — survived broken ribs, bruised kidneys and ridicule from Hollywood: "Everyone was telling me this wouldn't work and my career would be over," recalls producer Larry Kasanoff.

Videogame movies may be a risky proposition today, but in 1995 they were seen as hopeless.
Super Mario Bros (1993) and Double Dragon (1994) were total bombs — despised by critics and fans alike. The campy Street Fighter (1994) faired better financially, but was still years away from earning a cult following on home video.
So it was against all odds when Mortal Kombat hit No. 1 in theaters 20 years ago on Aug. 18, 1995. The film grossed $122 million worldwide and broke the videogame curse as the first adaptation embraced by fans.
Mortal Kombat endured expensive reshoots, broken ribs and screaming executives during its journey from arcade to screen. That journey began when producer Larry Kasanoff was visiting some friends at Midway Games in June 1993. He'd previously worked with James Cameron, turning Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) into a merchandising phenomenon worth millions. Among its crowning achievements was the T2 arcade game, a slick, first-person shooter that broke records for Midway.
The guys at Midway showed Kasanoff Mortal Kombat, a new game they said would beat his T2 record. It was bloody, hyper-realistic and already a sensation at the arcade. But Kasanoff believed it was destined to be more than just a video game. He envisioned it as a phenomenon on the order of T2. He saw a TV series, stage shows, albums and movies all in its future.
Midway wasn't so sure.
"YOU'RE FULL OF CRAP! IT'S JUST AN ARCADE GAME!"
In June 1993, Larry Kasanoff is catching up with friends at Midway Games' offices, who are high on their new arcade sensation, Mortal Kombat. Their followup Mortal Kombat II was in the testing phase, and Kasanoff is stunned by his first look at the series, which had yet to hit home videogame consoles.
Larry Kasanoff, producer: I played the Mortal Kombat arcade game in their office for half an hour. I turned to [Former Midway Games chief] Neil D. Nicastro and I said, "This is Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. This is not just an arcade game. This is a whole phenomenon." I said, "If you give me the rights to this, I promise you I will produce this, not just in movies, but in every medium in the world." He looked at me and said, "You're full of crap! It's just an arcade game!" That began a three-month process of me trying to convince them that it was more than just an arcade game. They didn't believe it. Because videogame movies had recently failed, like Mario Bros., no one believed it. I finally just wore them down and they optioned the rights to me for an insanely short amount of time, which now I would never do, but it was my first deal at my company.
Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat co-creator: When the movie was being discussed, I remember not taking it seriously at first. I thought, "This is probably going to be talked about but not happen." Then all of a sudden we were getting phone calls about casting and they were saying, "What about this guy for this character? What about this guy for that character?" I remember them saying, "What do you think of Danny Glover as Raiden?"

Kasanoff: Everyone was telling me this wouldn't work and my career would be over. Including New Line. They'd already greenlit the movie, and the studio head walked in with the script, threw it down on the table and said, "I hate the script. I hate this movie." And he yelled at us for an hour and then said, "Go ahead and make it."
Lauri Apelian, producer: We were getting submissions for top, top directors. Directors with whole lists of important, wonderful films. I really wanted to find someone who would have an innovative, fresh approach. I went to the CAA screening room to see Shopping. Paul [W.S.] Anderson was an unknown director with this little film. I didn't know anything about it. I was totally blown away with the talent he had in it. Jude Law, Sean Bean. They shot it on something like $100K in the streets of London. Afterwards, I said, "We've got to get this guy." There was no question.
Paul W.S. Anderson, director: I grew up in a northern industrial town called Newcastle Upon Tyne, where there was no film industry. I would come to London for meetings when I was trying to get my career off the ground. Quite often, I'd have a meeting at 10 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I didn't know anybody in London, so all I would do is play videogames for three or four hours at the arcade. One of my favorites was Mortal Kombat. So when I heard they were making a movie of Mortal Kombat, most filmmakers were being a bit snooty about it. I was super-enthusiastic.
Apelian: Paul would come in every single day with these amazing, creative ideas with how to shoot something or how to create some fantastical scene. Because of our monetary restraints, we weren't able to do exactly what he was coming up with, but it would lead to something else.
Anderson: I had no experience with visual effects, so I went to Samuel French's book store, and I bought every single book I could find on visual effects, on matte paintings, on CGI. I had the jargon down. It sounded like I knew more about CG than anyone else in Hollywood, even though I'd never been into a visual effects house. I kind of bluffed my way in, but I think they could see the enthusiasm.
THE KOMBATANTS ASSEMBLE
Anderson enters pre-production in early 1994, with the script from screenwriter Kevin Droney still in progress. Hong Kong martial arts veteran Robin Shou is a top choice for Liu Kang — but landing the part proves to be a grueling process.
Robin Shou, Liu Kang: It was the toughest casting process. I was working in Hong Kong back then, but I was visiting the U.S. because I'm from here originally. A friend of mine from an agency says, "They're casting for this movie Mortal Kombat." At first I laughed because Mortal Kombat is the dumbest name. Mortal Kombat? A videogame turned into a movie? A good friend of mine kept hounding me, saying, "You should really go for this. Meet for them." I read seven times. My agent friend had never heard of anyone who had to read seven times. I had to read for the producers, the director, the casting director, the line producer and then my final reading was with New Line. They were really hands on as far as picking this Asian Liu Kang, because he's an Asian lead and they're investing millions. It was grueling.
Anderson: The script was kind of being written while we were in pre-production, which is a challenging thing, but it was a good thing, because it gave me the opportunity to help steer the direction. When it came to actually shooting the movie, I really encouraged the actors to adlib quite a lot. It was a lot of the humor in the movie. There's a lot of good humor, especially coming form Linden Ashby [Johnny Cage] and Christopher Lambert [Raiden].
Linden Ashby, Johnny Cage: We came up with, "Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole," and the silly moment in the movie. The opening when I walk in and I go "let's dance."
Boon: [Fellow Mortal Kombat co-creator] John [Tobias] and I had comments about the script, because I remember at first from our perspective, it was way too comical. Raiden was cracking jokes like a prankster and I remember saying, "He's not a clown he's a very serious character." We didn't write the script, but we read the script and we sent back comments.
Ashby: There was just a lot to improve. And we sat down and we reworked the script to the point that I think the writer was not really thrilled with us. I remember seeing [screenwriter] Kevin Droney at a Christmas party after the movie had come out. And he introduced me to his date and goes, "this is the guy I told you about. This is the asshole that ruined my script." (Laughs). I was like, "Oh, hi." It wasn't a script to write home about and we worked hard on it. We didn't write Hamlet or anything, but we had a lot of fun with it.

Apelian: We needed to make the movie PG-13. That was a tough one, being a very violent videogame. We got in real close with the ratings board to find out how many curse words you could have, how much blood you can have. What we learned was if you killed a human on screen, you got an R rating. What we needed to do was any deaths that happened on screen where you are showing it, needed to be something other than a human. If you look at our movie, you had Goro killed on screen, but you could get away with that and still get a PG-13 rating.
Kasanoff: I never thought we were making a movie based on the videogame. I always thought what we had to do was imply that the videogame is the first incarnation of some story that exists sort of one up the pyramid. I always thought there's a story that exists and the first incarnation of that story was the videogame. Now let's go back to that story well and see how we can craft a movie from that. It doesn't contradict the videogame, it adds to it.
Apelian: We originally had Cameron Diaz cast as Sonya Blade. We were at New Line when The Mask was in postproduction, and Cameron Diaz was not a household name. No one knew her. New Line said, "Why don't you look some of the dailies that are coming in from this film and see what you think of this young, unknown actress." As soon as we saw the dailies from The Mask, there was no question that she was a star. We put her into training, because she had not really done this kind of martial arts work before. She broke her wrist right before shooting to the point where she couldn't do the martial arts stunts we needed. We were very happy with Bridgette [Wilson-Sampras]. It was great she was available.
Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Sonya Blade: The casting process was really long. I went back and auditioned and met with them so many times. Probably seven. I kept going back and going back and meeting with Paul and Larry and the producers. Then I got Billy Madison. So I went and filmed Billy Madison and thought, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to lose the part" because they couldn't make a decision. Then on my last day of filming on Billy Madison, they called me up asked, "Will you do it if we fly you out the next morning?" and I said "Yeah!" I was so happy both worked out.
Apelian: We also inquired about Sean Connery for the Raiden role. But we understood at that time that he really wanted to golf. He wasn't interested at that time in doing a physical role. For Johnny Cage, we needed to have an actor who could come across with the cockiness that the character required but still showed the humanity. Linden came in and had just the right combination of being that sort of cocky actor while still bringing humanity to the character and a warmth. With Talisa [Soto] (Kitana) and Bridgette, we had two characters that were well rounded. I didn't want the women to be cardboard characters. They needed to have a strength and an independence and an intellect that went well beyond their beauty and being sexy. They really were intelligent, strong women.
Christopher Lambert, Raiden: I had lunch with Paul Anderson and Larry Kasanoff, and they offered me the part. They gave me the script, and it was a fun script. Before I said yes, I watched Paul's first movie, which was great. Then with the hat, the robe, the white hair — all this was obviously building the character. In the movie, because of his powers, he doesn't need to train to practice. That was also good. It was the one and only action movie you didn't have to train for.
Anderson: When you make your first Hollywood movie, there's a great danger as a young filmmaker that you will be overwhelmed by the scale of them. Having the big guy on set, the person who is being paid the most money, who is the biggest name, be someone like Christopher really helps you. He was laid back, and he was chill, and nothing was too much for trouble for him. And that person sets the tone on the set. Because if it's not any trouble for him, it can't be trouble for anybody else.
Boon: Christopher Lambert did a great job. He brought a lot of his own personal performance to it. We were thinking so literally at the time. We were thinking Raiden is from Asian mythology. We never showed his face that clearly in the game, so we never really defined a race, but we didn't think the Highlander guy. That wasn't in our heads.
Anderson: With Christopher, we did a creative deal so he only worked for like four or five weeks, for X amount of dollars. He was expensive, and he wasn't going to be able to come to Thailand, because he would be going way over what we'd paid him. So I developed this plan where we were going to do close ups of Chris in L.A. and then wide shots of a double in Thailand. And then edit it together creatively. Christopher, when he found out, said "forget about that. I'm coming to Thailand." He sensed this was going to make it a better movie if he could be there in those landscapes. And it is. I'm sure his agents and manager and lawyer were furious with him, because he basically came to Thailand for free. When he was there, he paid for the wrap party as well.
IT HAS BEGUN
The crew assembles for the first part of the shoot in Los Angeles, before heading over to Thailand for the last month, where many of the signature scenes were filmed.
Ashby: We started out in Santa Monica Airport, where we shot a lot. We had big sets. There's a bar down there on the south side of the field, and we used to go there Friday when we'd wrap. Oh my God. Just crazy stuff. There was a medic who was a funny guy, quirky. He was very into security on the set. He should have been a security guy instead of a medic. Tom Cruise had a hanger nearby and came over and was like, "Hey what are you guys shooting? Can I check it out?" And the medic goes, "You're not in this movie. Go away!" And Tom Cruise goes, "I just want to see," and he goes, "I don't care who you are, get out of here!" He turned away Tom Cruise.

Larry Kasanoff (right) with the expensive Goro animatronic. (Courtesy: Larry Kasanoff)
Anderson: Goro was created by Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis from Amalgamated Dynamics. Tom was the guy in the Alien costume for Alien 3. Goro was a big creation, with a lot of computers and a lot of guys working around him. He broke down a lot, and we would have to wait for him. Goro became the diva of the set. Everyone would joke about it and say, "Goro won't come out of his trailer." We blocked him and I tried to shoot him as creatively as possible to kind of shoot around the limitations of working with a big animatronic like that. We did little bits of CG enhancement to help with his lip sync and stuff. There was a production meeting where we discussed taking Goro to Thailand, and I said, "that's never going to happen. He's barely behaving himself in a studio in Burbank. I don't know what he'd do in Thailand."
Jonathan A. Carlson, production designer: That guy had 13 to 16 puppeteers. The cables were going all over the place. One guy would be doing the eyeballs. The other guy would be doing the eyebrows. The other guy would be manipulating something else. They spent $1 million on that puppet. When we designed the statuary gardens on the sound stage, it was meant to have beautiful coy ponds and oversized lilies and water and reflection pools and at the last minute they were afraid Goro might fall over and fall into one of my ponds and short circuit and ruin the electronics. Instead it was, "Let's ruin Jonathan's design and not put water in it," so we took that part out.

Anderson: The first fight scene I shot with Robin Shou — Here's a man who has done Hong Kong movies. I haven't done any of them. We started doing the master shot, and it's this big, long fight, and we do it all in one take as a wide master. But there are a couple of mistakes, so I do it again. Then there are a couple more, so I do it again. And of course these guys are getting exhausted, because they are going for it. Robin comes up to me and says "Paul, you do know what coverage is, don't you?" And I said "Oh yeah! Sorry about that." In fight scenes, you use the wide shot for maybe like two seconds, and that's it. You're always in for the tight coverage for the impacts. It was a movie I learned a lot on, and I was very fortunate to be working with people who were supportive and didn't bite my head off when I made them repeatedly do fights in wide shots.
Shou: When Pat [E. Johnson] choreographed the fights, he's going to have to make it as comfortable as possible for me. I had a lot of ideas from whole Hong Kong cinema. It's a little bit stylized, but it's an action, martial arts kung-fu movie so it's OK to be stylized. So he gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted basically. He would give me a scenario and he'll start off the first few moves and then I would either finish it or just go to the next few moves the way I feel the flow should be. Then he would give suggestions. "Maybe we shouldn't do this, because at this point storywise we need to go to this story point." In a fight scene, there is still a story point. He would give me that kind of direction and I would just change the fight according to his direction. Choreography is like dance. The whole point is from how to get from point A to point B and Point B to Point C and at Point C you finish the fight. You design moves that get you from one point to another and then you wrap it up at the end. I had a lot of input on the fights.
Anderson: Going to Thailand was an important decision, because I wanted to get big, real landscapes. When we went on a location scout, the beaches I really liked were the ones you couldn't get to. We had to bring in all of the equipment on a boat every morning. It was wonderful, because I went to work on a speedboat every day. It didn't matter how tired you were from the night before. By the time you got to work with the wind blowing in your hair, going at 60 miles per hour across this bay, it was fantastic. You were ready to rock.
Carlson: Being in Thailand, they had a different mentality about set building and creating things. I'd say, "Guys, all these boulders, we've got to move them over here." They'd get about 100 guys and they'd have a cigarette and they'd get around the boulder and they'd argue about which way to roll it and then they'd roll it one roll. Then they'd stop and they'd get another cigarette out and yell and scream more about which way to roll it. Finally you'd come back at the end of of the day and the boulder would be on the other side. They didn't just take a backhoe and lift it up and take it over there in five minutes. "No, no, no. That's not how we do it in Thailand." Then we found this local guy who owned a lot of heavy equipment. We hired him, and he came down and smacked everybody around and screamed and yelled at everybody. After that day it was chop, chop. The first month without him — it was hell. Nothing was getting done. Pressure was mounting. He smacked a couple of guys and after that, boy stuff started getting built quickly.
Ashby: In Thailand, there were some guys that went up river in a big way. It was so hot. And you're shooting in the tropics and the amount of alcohol that was consumed — you'd stand there and people would be sweating and it'd smell like a distillery. You'd be standing next to somebody and they'd just drop down in the dirt. They were out. Everyone is hurting so badly at this point. You just look at the guy laying there and you'd be like "Oh. Cut." Nobody even got worked up about it.
Wilson-Sampras: I was the totally straight-laced one who finished work and went to my room. That was always my MO — so sad. I do remember they had quite a good time there. I had a blast, just differently. My mom came with me. Was I even 21 at that point or was I still 20? We toured around and had a blast. It was the most beautiful place you've ever seen.
Carlson: We took A-B foam to new heights in theater or film. It's yellow foam that expands 28 or 30 times over its own weight. It's amazing stuff. It's a derivative of white Styrofoam that can become hard as a rock or soft as a marshmallow or it can be easily carvable in a certain mixture. Before you knew it, we were creating our own world with this A-B foam. We'd take hemp rope and we'd spray it and it'd foam up and it'd become big vines. Or we'd spray it on plastic and peal it off and crack it and it would become giant leaves. We had teams of people going through Bangkok, because back then it was hard to find Styrofoam in Thailand. I had guys searching alleys and stereo shops all over in cities, grabbing Styrofoam where they could.

Bridgette Wilson-Sampras on set. (Photo courtesy Larry Kasanoff).
Wilson-Sampras: I did all of my own stunts and all my own fighting, which was awesome. I didn't have as long to prepare as everyone else did, because they were able to work with the trainers for a few weeks prior to the filming. Luckily, they pushed my big fight scene with Kano (Trevor Goddard) at the end when we were in Thailand filming, so I had the duration of filming to train during lunch or off times. In the very beginning, I dislocated my shoulder. I did a partial dislocation, but it was weird because I was totally fine. They were worried. They made me undergo these tests. They said, "You must have a shoulder issue and you're not telling us because you're handling this really well. You must have a trick shoulder." I said, "I swear I don't. I don't know what happened." They popped it back in and we kept going. It was all good.
Kasanoff: Some of those fights took two weeks to shoots. There is no fake fighting in there. If you see a guy run and jump on someone's head and flip them over, he did it. We scoured the world looking for these unique martial artists and bring them in and write fights around their skills. So one guy has skill X, we'd write the fight around skill X to showcase it.
Boon: At the time for me, craft services was a novelty. Seeing people in the costume and hearing them say, "Tomorrow the guy who plays Shang Tsung is going to be here. Next week we're shooting the Sub Zero/Liu Kang fight." You could see things were planned out. This was a very real thing with a budget. It was very cool for guys in their 20s just seeing what happened with this game turned into a movie.

Producer Larry Kasanoff and Robin Shou on set. (Courtesy Larry Kasanoff)
"I WAS PEEING BLOOD"
After wrapping in Thailand, test audiences tell the team that the film is great — but there's one major problem.
Ashby: We wrapped production and we put together a cut of the film, and they realized it didn't have the big signature fights.
Kasanoff: When we tested the first cut of the movie, the audience response was 100 percent uniform. "We love everything we see. There are not enough fights in this movie." We went back and spent a lot more money and we shot more fights.
Anderson: We added my favorite fights, which were the Scorpion fight with Johnny Cage and the Reptile fight with Liu Kang. We had a very good stunt coordinator, but as the movie went on, I wanted to embrace more of a Hong Kong, wirework martial arts feel. Robin was great for that, and he choreographed the extra fights. He was an actor, but he started as a stuntman in Hong Kong. He worked with Jackie Chan. He had a lot of knowledge. If you look back at Mortal Kombat, it was the first time those big, Chinese wire gags were used in a Western movie. Obviously The Matrix did that to the Nth degree several years later. But at the time, Mortal Kombat was very cutting edge.
Shou: Even though this is a movie and you want to be realistic as much as you can, it's still a videogame movie and it needs to be stylized. The movement shouldn't stop. The characters shouldn't take a break or take a breather, because if Scorpion wants to kill someone, he'll go after the guy relentlessly. The same thing with Reptile. There are no pauses. There's no, "I knocked you down, I take a breather and then you get up and we fight again." That's boring!
Anderson: Robin would rate the fights. They would be a one, a two or a three. That would refer to how many ribs he bruised when he did the fight. The Reptile fight was a three-rib fight, so he really felt like he'd delivered for me. I remember Linden Ashby as well. He was eating Advil like they were M&M'S. We just kicked the hell out of him during that fight. I remember him coming off set going, "I've never been in so much pain in my life." And I'm like "How many ribs have you broken? Robin's broken three!"
Shou: For the Johnny and Scorpion fight, the difficult part was to convince Linden that he could do everything. He's an actor. He said, "Give me as stunt double!" and I go, "Linden, you can totally do this. The more you do, the more realistic and the more believable the scene is." He bought it. "Yes, you're getting beat up. You're bruised, but at the end you are going to look fantastic."
Ashby: I was fighting with Chris Casamassa [Scorpion], who funnily enough was my teacher. Chris did an axe kick to my kidneys in that fight. I had a pad on but his heel just came right between the pads and got me in the kidney, hard. I was peeing blood. It hurt a lot.
Shou: For my fight with Reptile, it needs to be a little bit more kinetic. I did everything in that scene. In one of the stunts, Reptile threw me and I hit this pillar and I actually fractured two ribs on that, because I didn't expect I'd hit the edge of the pillar. That was also my tenth take, so I was a little tired. But I didn't tell anyone. What's the point? If I told them I fractured the ribs, they're going to stop production and then there goes my Hollywood dream. I was hurting. I was taking a lot of Advil and then I continued the rest of the fight with two fractured ribs. I told Keith Cooke, who plays Reptile, "I'm hurt on the right side of my ribs so don't kick me there." I muscled through the fight and then went to the hospital.
"WE GOT KICKED OUT OF TWO RECORD COMPANIES"
The Mortal Kombat soundtrack was bold, using electronic dance music in a way that normally wasn't done in a Hollywood film. Getting a record company to sign on became a nearly impossible task.
Kasanoff: The soundtrack was the first platinum EDM record ever in history. We insisted on using electronic dance music, which at the time was insane. We got kicked out of two record companies. We had a deal at Sony for a lot of money. In those days you could get a lot of money for a soundtrack — no longer. We walk in and say, here's our idea. Electronic dance music. And they go "no, here's our idea. Buckethead!" He was a guy who played electronic music with a bucket on his head. We were like, "Well, he's a good guitar player…" they wanted Buckethead to duel Eddie Van Halen or something. And we said, "electronic dance music," and they kicked us out. Then we go to Virgin Records. We walk in and say "Great idea, electronic dance music." And they say, "yeah, how about Janet Jackson?" By the way, I love Janet Jackson, but we were like, "What? For Mortal Kombat? We get kicked out. Finally we get no record deal. The studio was great by backing us and letting us do that. We made the MK soundtrack and gave it to this little record company no one had ever heard of and we came out with the first EDM platinum soundtrack.
George S. Clinton, composer: For the first test screening they had put a temporary score under it that was mainly traditional orchestral action music, and it became clear that the target audience, which was used to hearing techno music blasting during game play, was not happy with that approach. So that gave me the opportunity to come up with an approach I called “Techno-Taiko-Orcho.” My score would have a techno core with a layer of Asian ethnic instruments (Taiko drums, shakuhachi, Tuvan throat singer) surrounded by an orchestra. But not just a regular orchestra, a Testosterone Orchestra. No treble clef instruments (no flutes, clarinets, trumpets, violins, etc.). Just 18 violas, 14 celli, six basses and lots of low brass—and percussion. It was massive. When music supervisors John Houlihan and Sharon Boyle introduced me to guitar wizard Buckethead, I knew he would become a major element in my score as well.
Kasanoff: My partner in my company is Jimmy Ienner. He is among many other things one of the greatest music producers in history. What you have to have in a fight movie is a driving beat. You have to have a dance beat. You have to have a beat that makes the audience move to the fight. Not just watch it from afar. You have to get them involved. Since it's Mortal Kombat, you have to have something that is harsh and hip and driving. That's why we settled on that kind of music. We scoured, looking for everybody. We looked and went to clubs and found people and got submissions. We've got the best music people in our corner. We just looked and looked and tried and tried and tried. That's the process. Music in a movie exists to serve the movie. To serve the scene. If you watch one of those fights without the music and you watch it with that music, within 30 seconds you go "oh, I get it." There was no magic to it other than we knew it was right.
Clinton: The techno songs they chose for the film were killer, including the classic Immortals song, and another challenge for me was making sure the techno part of my score could hold its own.
"I WAS SO TERRIFIED"
The film goes into post-production, and the team awaits its Aug. 18, 1995 release date. It would surprise everyone by holding the No. 1 spot for three consecutive weeks.
Lambert: When Mortal Kombat was being made, the industry very doubtful about it. "We have no idea if it could work."
Anderson: I was so terrified of the opening. Was it going to open? Was it not going to open? Was I going to have a career? Was I going to get kicked out of America? I thought, "God, the last place I want to be is in L.A. I just want to go somewhere else." I went to Hawaii with my girlfriend at the time, and of course we get to the middle of absolute nowhere in Hawaii and I read the movie is No. 1. And I go "Damnit! Why aren't we in L.A.? I've got the number one movie. I should be in L.A. making the most of it." I'd already paid to go to Hawaii, so we ended up staying there.
Boon: I remember waking up on a Sunday morning and seeing on CNN, "Mortal Kombat opened at $23.3 million," which was the second biggest August opening in history, which is huge. It was a big deal.
Apelian: None of us had a question in our minds that it would be successful. We were surprised that it stayed at No. 1 for three weeks. I don't think we expected all of that.
Kasanoff: I had promised [Midway's] Neil [D. Nicastro] I would turn this into every medium in the world. "OK, we'll use this guy in the TV series and here's what we'll do for the show." It was to the extent that the day the movie opens, I got on a plane to the Catskills to rehearse the Radio City Music Hall show. That began several years of me going from one Mortal Kombat production to the next.
Anderson: After Mortal Kombat, I wanted to try something different. [New Line President] Mike [De Luca] asked me whether I'd be interested in coming back [for 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation]. I ended up doing something very different. I did Event Horizon next, which was super dark and couldn't be more different from Mortal Kombat. I stretched my wings afterwards. Looking back on it, I went "ah, maybe I should have done it." It's one of the reasons why on a go forward basis, when I became involved with Resident Evil, I felt if I'm going to do another one of these adaptations, this time I'm going to stay with it. I'm going to really stay with the franchise and shepherd it. Ironically, me not doing Mortal Kombat II is kind of the reason I've ended up doing Resident Evil I, II, III, IV, V, VI.

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Nude images of Marilyn Monroe offer snapshots of taboo Hollywood history

Rare handmade color separations of one of Marilyn Monroe’s most iconic images have gone on display in San Francisco, showing the iconic actress in the nude as well as the painstaking effort that went into creating posters before the computer age.
On Friday and Saturday, Bay Area residents will be able to gaze at large prints the organizers say represent one of the most important cultural moments in Hollywood’s history.
At a time when sex was taboo in Los Angeles and actors signed morality agreements, Monroe was yet to be the monumental success that would make her a symbol of both Hollywood and sex. She was fearful of the backlash nude images could have on her career, so she signed the model release form “Mona Monroe” to hide her identity.
According to Limited Runs, one of the largest online sellers of original and vintage posters, print art and photography and the curators for the traveling display, in 1949, Monroe found herself “behind on rent and her car in repossession” and happened to come across photographer Tom Kelley.
Limited Runs president and founder Pierre Vudrag said on Thursday, as he retold the story of how the photos came to be, that “these photos really changed Hollywood’s perception of what was acceptable and what would sell”.

Monroe calendar — ‘Studios urged her not to admit that she was the model in the image and they were worried that it would end her career before it began.’ Photograph: Limited Runs LLC

Monroe, after a few days contemplating whether or not to pose nude, agreed to the shoot and on 27 May 1949 spent two hours having Kelley shoot a set of pictures that included what would become one of the most important images in modern American culture. The image would eventually grace the first ever issue of Playboy, which Vudrag believes helped propel the magazine to success.
In December 1953, a young Hugh Hefner purchased the rights to reproduce the images for $500 from the John Baumgarth Company, and used the image as part of the “Sweetheart of the Month” centerfold for the inaugural issue. Not convinced the Playboy magazine idea would be successful, the first issue was unnumbered, but it would sell over 54,000 copies and proved to be the launch of Hefner’s Playboy empire.
The photos have avoided destruction on a number of occasions, said the organizers of the display, which includes the original separations that allow the viewer to see the detail and time that was required to develop images for calendars, magazines and other mediums.
Each separation is painstakingly created and artisans “corrected the many layers of film for the full color printing process – a masterpiece of printer’s art”, a handout given to visitors reads.
Vudrag said that after the images were leaked, studios wanted Monroe to deny the image was of her, concerned it would doom her still yet to blossom film career.
“Studios urged her not to admit that she was the model in the image and they were worried that it would end her career before it began.”
Instead, when Monroe told UPI reporter Aline Mosby in March 1952 that she was indeed the nude calendar girl, Mosby wrote a sympathetic story titled “Marilyn Monroe admits she’s the nude blonde of calendar.”
The reaction was almost uniformly positive, transforming Monroe into an overnight Hollywood star and “it changed forever the country’s perception of sex and nudity and what actors and actresses could do,” Vudrag said.
The display, which runs through Saturday in San Francisco at the Sarah Stockings Gallery, is a chance for art connoisseurs to view the iconic calendar images in their original state, seeing the intricate painting details that were required to develop and manufacture calendars for decades.
The exhibit will next be on display in Las Vegas from 13-15 August before heading to Chicago and New York in mid-to-late September.

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Islamist Influence in Hollywood

Americans are clearly alarmed about Islamic terrorists who are encouraging and spreading violence across the globe, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as relentlessly threatening violence to the United States. So readers might be surprised to learn that organizations which sympathize and associate with jihadists are yielded a major say over what the film industry says about Islam and Muslims.
Hollywood, for instance, regularly capitulates to The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on how to portray Muslims, even though many in CAIR’s leadership are sympathetic to Islamic terrorists. As Steve Pomerantz, the FBI’s former Chief of Counterterrorism, has bluntly stated: “CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups.”

CAIR’s connection to the Holy Land Foundation is central to this assessment. On May 27, 2009, U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis sentenced the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and five of its leaders on convictions of providing material support to Hamas, an Islamic terrorist group whose charter vows to obliterate the State of Israel through violence. CAIR was labeled an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the HLF trial, the largest terrorist financing trial in the history of the United States.
Additionally, several of CAIR’s former leaders are now in jail on terror-related convictions. Moreover, virtually all of CAIR’s leadership supports Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are United States – designated terrorist organizations. Nevertheless, CAIR is actively instructing Hollywood on how to depict Islam and Muslims.
Nihad Awad, Founding Member of CAIR and current Executive Director of CAIR National, boasts that he has successfully negotiated with Hollywood to combat “negative stereotypes of Muslims.” In a 2010 speech, Awad made the inaccurate claim that one Hollywood company created in the prior three decades 800 films that presented Muslims from “an Israeli point of view.” In fact, no Hollywood company can be found to have created that many films of any type.
Here are some examples of CAIR’s successes in Hollywood:
Paramount Pictures’ “Sum of All Fears” was based on a book by Tom Clancy and starred Ben Affleck. The original plot was about Muslim terrorists who shot down an Israeli jet flying over Syria, which was carrying nuclear weapons.
CAIR complained about “negative stereotyping of Muslims” and lobbied to get the script changed for two years prior to the film’s release. Eventually, the villains were altered from Muslim terrorists to Australian neo-Nazis.
Twentieth Century Fox produced “True Lies,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, a movie about an Islamic terrorist and a spy with an unfaithful wife.
CAIR demanded a meeting with the producers. When it was declined, CAIR issued leaflets and held numerous activities protesting the film. Eventually, FOX made a disclaimer stating that the film is a work of fiction and doesn’t represent the actions or beliefs of any particular religion.
“Kingdom of Heaven,” also produced by Twentieth Century FOX, starred Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom. It concerned the Crusades and the battle for Jerusalem.
To avoid problems, the producers gave CAIR a special pre-screening of the film and hired a Muslim consultant who is anti-Israel and believes America is a racist society. Accordingly, several scenes were cut prior to the film’s release. In the end, the movie was a skewed account of the Crusades, not only depicting the Christians as murderers and hypocrites, but the Muslims as morally superior.
CAIR-NY has gone so far as to demand that CBS stop airing all films, TV and radio shows on the subject of Islamic terrorism, whether fact or fiction, claiming that these “defame” Muslims. CAIR-NY argued that the shows cause discrimination and subject Muslim children to harassment. “Not Without My Daughter,” starring Sally Field, and several Chuck Norris movies were among the films that CAIR wanted off the air. To boycott all CBS radio and TV shows from both the CBS News and entertainment divisions as well as their advertisers, CAIR-NY started an online petition. Consequently, CBS changed the title of a Chuck Norris film, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that in an upcoming film on terrorism it would remove all portrayals of Muslims.
“24 Hours” was a hit syndicated TV series produced for the FOX Channel. It was about a counter-terrorism agent who tried to thwart cyber, biological and chemical terrorist attacks. It won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe and an Emmy. It showed villains from a range of backgrounds, including German, Russian, American and Muslim.
After one episode which portrayed a Muslim family as part of a sleeper cell, CAIR met with FOX to complain. FOX capitulated, cutting additional scenes that presented Muslims negatively. FOX also issued a statement explaining that the show is fiction and assumes people can distinguish fiction from reality. FOX also allowed CAIR to air public service announcements of Muslims from different ethnicities, stating “I am an American Muslim”.
It’s important to understand that none of these films alleged all Muslims are terrorists. But CAIR wants no Muslims to be viewed in this light. And it’s obviously unconcerned with reciprocity, like discouraging the negative stereotyping of Jews that is rampant in the Arab media.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), founded by Muslim Brotherhood members, has condemned as a “crime” the Oslo accords in which the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to recognize the State of Israel. Moreover, MPAC officially opposed the designation of both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, giving Palestinian violence a pass, and repeatedly condemning Israel’s defense of itself against the onslaught of thousands of rockets launched from Gaza. According to MPAC, the greatest violence taking place in Gaza and the West Bank is Israeli “occupation” and its leadership has likened Israel to Nazi Germany.
Yet, MPAC has a Hollywood Bureau which indoctrinates film-makers on Islam and offers consultations for script approval. It also provides awards to those in Hollywood who depict Islam and Muslims in a positive light. Past winners have included Alec Baldwin and Michael Moore. The bureau also connects aspiring film makers, writers and actors with Hollywood professionals and provides Muslim youth with tips on how to succeed in business.
Both new media and traditional media, including Hollywood movies, influence young minds and help shape their worldviews. Instead of appeasing Islamist organizations, Hollywood should fight for classical liberal values, including free speech, artistic license and critical thinking. It should not be complicit with Islamist groups that aim to persuade America there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism.

Islamist Influence in Hollywood

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Box Office: 'Fantastic Four' Falls Flat, Could Lose to 'Mission: Impossible'

Elsewhere, Joel Edgerton's directorial debut 'The Gift' pulls ahead of Meryl Streep starrer 'Ricki and the Flash.'

Controversial director Josh Trank's Fantastic Four is off to a dismal start at the North American box office, where it's headed for one of the lowest openings for a Hollywood studio superhero title.
Playing in 3,995 theaters, Fantastic Four is expected to earn roughly $11 million on Friday for a weekend gross of $27 million-$28 million, putting the movie in an unexpectedly close race with holdover Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, starring Tom Cruise, for the box-office crown.
Fantastic Four's showing is a blow for Fox as it goes about trying to reboot one of its marquee franchises. The movie is no doubt being hurt by scathing reviews, as well as drama whipped up by the director. On Thursday, Trank tweeted that the final version of the superhero was not his own and that his version would have gotten better notices. (He later deleted the tweet.) Fox has not commented on Trank's barb.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed in May that Trank's behavior and unusual conduct on set was a cause of great concern for the studio and producers Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker. There were also reshoots to shore up the third act, according to insiders.
Heading into the weekend, Fantastic Four was expected to clear at least $40 million, although many expected it to approach $50 million.
Fantastic Four's debut is coming in well behind the first two films, Fantastic Four ($56.1 million) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ($58.1 million). The $120 million film, starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, may mark one of the worst debuts for a Marvel Comics film adaptation. In 2012, Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance, from Sony, launched to $22.1 million (that movie cost notably less to make).
In terms of a big-budget superhero movie, Marvel or otherwise, the last studio film to open to less than $40 million was The Green Hornet in 2011 with $33.5 million.
Elsewhere, The Gift, Joel Edgerton's directorial debut, looks to beat the Meryl Streep-starring Ricki and the Flash with a $10 million-plus debut, putting it at No. 3 (both are competing for female attention).

See More Critic's Picks: Meryl Streep's Best Un-Nominated Performances

Streep returns to theaters as a rocker with dashed dreams and a troubled family life in Sony's Ricki and the Flash. Jonathan Demme's film, costing $18 million, is only opening in 1,600 theaters and is pacing to launch to $6 million-$8 million, one of the lowest nationwide openings for a Streep film. The movie intends to grow its theater count in the coming weeks, and hopes to be a draw for adults.

Thriller The Gift — a throwback to psychological thrillers including Fatal Attraction — is the first test for Bob Simonds' STX Entertainment. The movie, boosted by stellar reviews, is playing in 2,500 theaters. Edgerton also stars in the Blumhouse film as a man with an unhealthy fixation on an old schoolmate (Jason Bateman) and his wife (Rebecca Hall).
This weekend's fourth new offering is animated film Shaun the Sheep, from Aardman Entertainment and Lionsgate. A spinoff of the hugely successful, dialogue-free British TV series, the film, which opened Wednesday to $850,000, will be playing in 2,320 theaters by Friday.
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From Hollywood action to a turn on the fringe: John Hannah returns to Scottish stage

When John Hannah was a young boy in East Kilbride, the son of a toolmaker and a supermarket cleaner, a future as the star of a major Hollywood action franchise such as The Mummy would have looked an impossibly long way off. But this weekend Hannah is making a journey that could prove just as tough.
The actor, perhaps best known as Gwyneth Paltrow’s leading man in Sliding Doors, has returned to Scotland to work on stage there for the first time in 25 years, and has chosen to reappear in front of Edinburgh’s festival audiences by emerging from a wooden box on the recreated platform of a dirty, disused Bulgarian railway station inside a 320-seat fringe venue.
“It feels exciting to be here,” Hannah told the Observer this weekend after the first preview performance of a little-known Bulgarian play, The Titanic Orchestra.
“I find that the best way of testing myself and challenging myself is by doing things I don’t know that I can do, and that’s exactly what this is. That’s why the fringe is so interesting, because it lets you do that in a way that isn’t possible with other projects. I’m really enjoying the whole process.”
Hannah, 53, joins a succession of film and television stars who have gone back to basics and faced small, live audiences at the fringe. Last night Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche appeared in the opening night of Sophocles’ Antigone at King’s Theatre, while last year the star of the Danish drama The Killing, Sofie Gråbøl, won plaudits for her performance in the third of Rona Munro’s historical James Plays at the Festival Theatre.
In 2008 Hannah’s fellow Scot Alan Cumming, celebrated on Broadway and acclaimed for the US television series The Good Wife, took a role in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Euripides’ The Bacchae at the International Festival. Two years later he was back in a smaller fringe venue presenting a one-man cabaret show. In 2012 the veteran Scottish film and television actor Bill Paterson also returned to the festival and won awards for his performance at the Traverse. Edinburgh in August, long established as a proving ground for new talent, is also operating as a place for the big names in international commercial entertainment to test themselves anew.

John Hannah

In The Titanic Orchestra, which has never been performed in Britain, Hannah plays a mysterious magician, dressed in top hat and tails, who turns up unexpectedly, with dubious stories to tell of the wider world and its many deceptions. The part in Hristo Boytchev’s play is a good fit for a star who has sampled the taste of success and has now come back to his homeland.
His director, Russell Bolam, sees the production as “like a homecoming” for Hannah, while the actor describes a Scottish crowd as hard to fool. “We don’t like people getting above themselves up here, regardless of whether they have or not,” he said. “A lot of straight talking goes on.”
Hannah’s character – who may or may not be the escape artist Harry Houdini, and might also be the conductor of the orchestra that famously continued playing as the Titanic sank – is the linchpin of the drama. He performs a series of sleight-of hand magic tricks, involving boiled eggs and large bears, and presides over the disintegration of the limited world of a defeated quartet of alcoholic tramps, who are vainly working out how to swindle any passing train passengers. But it is a play which the actor believes throws up some big questions as well as some jokes.
“I don’t know if you could call it bleak,” he said. “It’s a fascinating show in that its great power is that it isn’t linear or naturalistic in any way, and it’s got a very philosophical kind of quality, and is a very difficult thing to challenge yourself with as an actor. That’s the main reason I was drawn to it.”
The role also appealed to Hannah because of Bolam, who last year lured him back on to the stage to perform in Chekov’s Uncle Vanya at London’s St James’s Theatre.
“John is one of the most fun and egoless actors you could hope to find in a rehearsal room,” said Bolam. “That we’ve found this strange, beautiful play – only the fourth Bulgarian play to ever be performed in the UK – to work on together so soon after Uncle Vanya is thrilling, particularly in a climate where any Bulgarian references in the media relate to immigration.”
The play’s run at Pleasance Courtyard comes as Hannah, who recently appeared on British televisions in Atlantis and in the mini-series The Widower, prepares for the release of a new slew of films, including Kickback, with John Cusack, and Funny Cow, with Maxine Peake and Martin Freeman, so the Edinburgh run is a kind of curtain-raiser for phase two of his screen career. Hannah’s fame dates back to his recitation of WH Auden’s poem Funeral Blues in the huge box office sensation Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film which he says he has not watched for 20 years.
Although he toured Scotland with shows in his youth, he has not appeared at the festival since the time he helped to stage a student production of Dylan Thomas’s dramatic poem Under Milk Wood. He eventually became disillusioned with theatre, he has said, but the new show is “a test to see if the stage still matters to me”.

Other fringe highlights

SINISTER E NESBITT
The Railway Children author also wrote nasty ghost stories, now revealed in Philip Meek’s play, Edith in the Dark. Momentum Playhouse
GAME OF THRONES, THE MUSICAL
Not the Coldplay spoof, but an earlier, fully-formed production of Thrones! comes to Edinburgh from Baby Wants Candy. Assembly George Square
FREDDIE FLINTOFF
2nd Innings: for three nights only the former cricketing star promises a good account of himself till light fades. Pleasance Courtyard
ROSS AND RACHEL
What happened next? As the real Rachel, Jennifer Aniston, gets married, James Fritz’s play looks at “perfect” relationships. Assembly Festival
TRANSGENDER SPOTLIGHT
Entertainment from stand-up comic Sarah Franken, formerly Will Franken, to Jo Clifford’s vision of Christ in The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven. The Stand and Summerhall
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LatestGlobalNews2015

Saturday, 8 August 2015

Hollywood udates on Tuesday, August 18, 2015