Mortal Kombat is an American martial arts action film series based on the fighting video game series of the same name by Midway Games. The first film was produced by Lawrence Kasanoff’s Threshold Entertainment. The first film, Mortal Kombat, was released in 1995 and its sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was released in 1997.

After the two films, game publisher Midway filed for bankruptcy. Warner Bros., which became the parent company of New Line Cinema in 2008 (after more than a decade of operating both as separate divisions of Time Warner), made a bid to buy most of Midway’s assets, including Mortal Kombat. In June 2009, Kasanoff and Threshold sued in bankruptcy court, claiming that they owned the copyrights to many of the series’ characters.