If you’ve been following the happenings at Midway you’ll know the company is in dire straits,  facing bankruptcy following the failure of Wheelman to pull in the money they needed to keep things going. Recently Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment swooped in with a $33 million dollar offer to acquire most of the company, including of course the Mortal Kombat franchise, undoubtedly the only reason to really put up the cash to acquire the company.

Larry Kasanoff has filed a lawsuit on behalf of himself and his company, Threshold Entertainment claiming that in 1993 Midway granted him the rights in perpituity to the film and TV license for the series. Unfortunately for Kasanoff the clauses in his contract don’t actually grant that; his argument says that they ‘amount to the same thing’. He goes on to claim that Mortal Kombat is much more a product of Threshold than Midway since they claim that the characters in the video games were simply flat, stock archetypes who were developed into actual characters by the production company in the various films and tv series. That of course ignores all the inconsistencies between the depictions of the characters in their films and television series, not to mention that the film takes a certain degree of  story-related artistic license. In the film both Kano and Shang Tsung are killed, while as established in game canon by Mortal Kombat II (released two years before the film) Kano was a captive of Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung was still living.

His claims of establishing the back stories of the characters are illogical as well considering that with the exception of Liu Kang having a younger brother who was killed by Shang Tsung in the film, all the back stories of the characters in the film are established in the original Mortal Kombat. Much of Kasanoff’s claim is based on his argument that he made the series “more than just video games” and claims responsibility for its rise to fame, citing certain introductions by reporters and newscasters who mistakenly attribute the incredible popularity of the series to him. The original film was profitable for the same reason all video game films can be: fans go to see if they got it right, others get dragged along or go to see what looks like a fun, brainless action flick.

Creating one relatively successful movie, one terrible sequel and two television series that lasted a single season doesn’t grant Kasanoff the rights to even call it a ‘multimedia enterprise’ much less lay claim to any rights.