Director Kevin Tancharoen got permission to make a series of shorts out of the Mortal Kombat concept video he released. As it turns out, the reason why it went viral was a complete accident.
“I am not the most technically savvy YouTube person,” Tancharoen tells Gamasutra in an interview. “What came out wasn’t the final product in my mind. I wasn t done yet. It was still in its rough phase, but I couldn t send a 2GB file over email, so my friend said I could create a private page on YouTube and sent it to him to review. It turns out it wasn t that private.”
“I looked on Twitter and saw MK was trending and thought ‘Oh God, did someone beat me to the punch,'” he said. “Once he knew it was his, he grew worried about rights he hadn’t secured yet. The actors could have quickly rebelled against me. Thank God people liked it, because it could have gone really bad.”
There will be nine episodes, about 7-10 minutes apiece exploring the backstory of the characters. Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon is working with Tancharoen on pre-production.
“We’re working together hand in hand,” he says. “I’ve got to admit, I had a little fanboy geek moment when I met him. I flashed back to when I was 12 or 13 and played the first game and was obsessed with it. He was very, very happy with the short. He knows it took liberties with the universe of Mortal Kombat, but was okay with that. It blows my mind.”
Tancharoen is not resting his laurels on just doing the short films, however. “The bigger thing for me, of course, is I want to translate this to a feature. I would love to tell the stories that lead the character up to a certain point, then have them merge together in a big 3D movie, he concluded.”
Source: Gamasutra
