Warner Bros. Picks a Director for Its ‘Mortal Kombat’ Reboot

Odds are good that a few of you read this headline and thought, “Wait, there’s a Mortal Kombat reboot in production?” It’s true! Despite mixed success as a feature film and a web-series, Warner Bros. has decided to once again chase that sweet video game industry money with a big screen remake of the popular video game franchise. James Wan  —  who joined the project all the way back in 2015 as the executive producer  —  recently described the film as the fantasy version of Enter the Dragon, expressing a great deal of enthusiasm for the universe that he and the Mortal Kombat screenwriters had created.

And while we’ve spent most of 2016 arguing about the Warner Bros. take on the DC Cinematic Universe, the studio has kept plugging along on Mortal Kombat. Yesterday, Variety (via Collider) announced that the studio had named commercial director Simon McQuoid as the right man for its action-packed brawler. While McQuoid is something of an unknown quantity when it comes to feature filmmaking ,  this won’t be the first time that he has been given the reins on a major Hollywood property. Below are two of McQuoid’s most recognizable advertisements, one a Star Wars commercial for Duracell, the other a live-action spot for Sony’s Playstation video game franchises.

Admittedly, it’s a little surprising to see a director make the leap from commercials to studio pictures these days. Recent history has shown that studios prefer to pull from the ranks of independent cinema, finding a modestly budgeted project with good reviews and giving that director a crack at their newest summer blockbuster. Sure, plenty of directors have gotten their start in music videos and commercials in years past  — Michael Bay and Zack Snyder are two big-time filmmakers who started in television advertisements  —  but now this seems more like the exception to the rule. It’ll be interesting to see if this becomes a more common practice as the lines between advertisements and entertainment continue to blur.