Mortal Kombat Movie: Every Character & Actor Confirmed So Far

In 2010, director Kevin Tancharoen released an eight-minute short film called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth.

Made as a pitch to Warner Bros. Pictures for a reboot of the Mortal Kombat movie franchise, Tancharoen and writer Oren Uziel imagined a grittier world, where all of the known characters were more realistic and less comic book inspired. The fan response was huge with almost universal praise being heaped upon the project.

This impressive pitch led to New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. announcing the next year that Tancharoen and Uziel had been hired to create a new R-rated Mortal Kombat. Sadly, budget constraints meant that this version of the film would never even begin shooting, but the fan response to an R-rated Mortal Kombat film was clear for everyone to see.

Wanting someone who knew horror to take the reins, New Line hired James Wan, the creator of the Saw series of films, hoping he'd bring some of his magic to the IP.

With the film recently wrapping production though, we still don't know much about it. Even now, only a few characters have been confirmed, with many played by debuting actors or stuntmen, alongside some respected veterans of the industry.

Here's every character we know will be in 2021's Mortal Kombat reboot, and who they'll be played by.

Played by: Chin Han

Appearing as a decrepit old man (based off David Lo Pan from Big Trouble In Little China) in the first game, Shang Tsung was a master sorcerer who could change his form to that of any of the characters in the game. It was later revealed that this was a side-effect of being cursed by the gods; he would have to consume souls in order to stay young, but this enabled him to access the knowledge and abilities of those he fed upon.

Once a champion of Mortal Kombat whose victories secured many realms, Tsung fell to the Great Kung Lao when Outworld tried to take over Earthrealm.

No longer the champion, he worked from the shadows for Shao Kahn, luring Earth's mightiest heroes (no, not those ones) to his island for the Mortal Kombat tournament where they would fight each other to the death.

Those who survived were to face the monstrous Goro, and soon Outworld had gained nine of the ten victories it needed to take over Earthrealm.

Chin Han will be playing Shang Tsung in the 2021 film, and that's reason enough to be excited by it. Named as one of Asia's 25 greatest actors of all time, his 26-year career has spanned many projects.