Mortal Kombat 1‘s first Kombat Pack has already been revealed to put its focus on comic book baddies like The Boys’ Homelander and DC’s Peacemaker, but perhaps things could have been very different if one or two things changed.
MK Co-creator Ed Boon recently joined Rolling Stone for an interview for the launch of the new game where he revealed NetherRealm Studios had indeed tried getting John Wick in on the action.
Rolling Stone’s Christopher Cruz asks Boon if modern action movies are now influencing NetherRealm’s style the same way ’80s movies did in the past, and this is what the longtime developer had to say.
“When we were making [the original] Mortal Kombat, the whole team was in the midst of Bloodsport, Enter the Dragon, and all the Terminator movies,” replied Boon. “I could certainly see the John Wicks of the world… as a matter of fact, that is one of the ones that we tried to get — John Wick — in Mortal Kombat, and we didn’t get it.”
This is a pretty interesting development because it’s come up a few times in the past at this point.
“I could certainly see the John Wicks of the world… as a matter of fact, that is one of the ones that we tried to get — John Wick — in Mortal Kombat, and we didn’t get it” – Ed Boon
Back in 2021, Keanu Reeves responded to a question about whether he’d be down to have his characters like John Wick or Neo from The Matrix join Mortal Kombat where the actor stated he’d say no if it were up to him.
Boon quickly replied with some snark at first, but then later alluded to Reeves not saying no to Injustice.
We don’t know when this attempt to get John Wick into Mortal Kombat would have happened, but it was most likely either for Mortal Kombat 1 or Mortal Kombat 11.
And with the recent datamining about apparent future DLC characters, it seems that Boon is not pulling our leg that they couldn’t get the film assassin.
Although Reeves now famously featured as a character in Cyberpunk 2077, we don’t know the exact reason the actor is against being in MK, but it could very well just simply be he doesn’t care to see a digital version of himself get ripped apart in 100 different ways.
Even without Keanu’s blessing necessarily, however, there is still a potential world out there where the film studios would still hand over the rights to characters like John Wick and Neo, just without any involvement from Reeves.
We previously saw something of that nature in MK11 where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s likeness was used for The Terminator, but he was voice acted by a soundalike.
That case is pretty much the outlier for the series though considering NetherRealm Studios has gone out of their way for the past decade to get original actors involved when bringing in guests to MK or Injustice like Peter Weller for RoboCop.
Boon also brings up a pipedream idea the team had with MK1 where they had every character now played by an actor with mention of his dream of having Keanu as Kenshi.
It’s probably a good thing they didn’t go through with that, however, given the community response to Megan Fox as Nitara in the new game.
Maybe someday Ed Boon will get his apparent wish of working with Keanu Reeves, but now is not that time unless they’re all playing the long con on us all, which we doubt.
You can check out the full interview with Boon on Rolling Stone.
