James Wan is one of our very favourite modern directors here at Moonbase Alpha, and, as such, everything he’s involved with immediately gets our attention. Sure, we’re not really ones for fast cars and explosions, but even Wan’s Fast & Furious movie did ridiculous numbers at the box office, proving that the director can handle more than just horror. Well, whilst Wan is currently deep in the murky planning stages of his Aquaman movie, now comes an update on another project that this genre favourite is involved with.

For what seems like an age, Wan has been tied to a new Mortal Kombat movie, for which he will serve as a producer. All has been relatively quiet on that front in recent months, but it appears that the film is still a “go”.

Speaking to IGN about the project, Wan said, “It’s still cooking away. With that particular project, that’s a really cool property that I loved growing up as a kid. Besides the game, even the movies as well, I kind of enjoyed them for what they are. The key here is to try and do it right. I don’t want to rush into it. So right now, we’re just trying to take our time to make sure it’s heading in the right direction. I think that’s more important than trying to rush through it and pump up something that no one likes. I love the characters. I think they’re such colourful characters. It’s such an amazing take on, basically, Enter the Dragon. It’s that fantasy version, the video game version, of Enter the Dragon. And in doing so, they ended up creating such interesting characters and I think that is such a cool world to explore. This really mythical, bigger world that lives on another dimension on top of ours. I think that’s really fun to play with and so we’ll see.”

The last really concrete news we heard on this new Mortal Kombat movie was back in 2013 when Mortal Kombat: Legacy director Kevin Tancharoen announced that he was no longer going to be directing the film. Since then, it’s been pretty much radio silence on the film, so it’s good to hear that the movie is still happening, it’s just a case that Wan and New Line Cinema are looking to make sure things are done right rather than just putting out a film for the sake of putting out a film.

Mortal Kombat itself debuted back in 1992 as part of the wave of renewed popularity in beat-em-ups and fighting games following the huge success of Street Fighter II. Over the following decades, a whole host of sequel games, movies, TV shows, webseries, and more have been delivered to fans, with the most recent incarnation of the property being last year’s brutally brilliant Mortal Kombat X game.

As for James Wan, he burst on to the scene in a huge way when he created the Saw franchise with Leigh Whannell, and has since gone on to direct the first two Insidious movies and the two horrific-yet-stunning outings for The Conjuring. As mentioned, he also helmed Furious 7, which took home a whopping $1.5 billion at the global box office. Up next for this hugely talented fella is Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa as the King of Atlantis. That film is currently set for a July 27th, 2018 release.