Mortal Kombat Film Producer Sues To Block Midway Sale

Amid bankrupt Midway's proposed $33 million sale to Warner Bros., Threshold Entertainment's Lawrence Kasanoff is suing the company over his IP interests in the Mortal Kombat franchise. The complaint, first unearthed by website GamePolitics, shows Kasanoff, whose company holds the film license to Mortal Kombat, claiming majority credit for building the brand to its present value. Kasanoff says when Threshold approached Midway in 1993, his idea for a Mortal Kombat film, television series and "other productions" was met with a tepid reception, and it was his work that fleshed out the franchise's characters and mythos. "Midway's creative input was almost entirely limited to the videogames," says the complaint. "On their own, the videogames provided only minimal back-story and mythology, and only flat, "stock" characters... Kasanoff and Threshold were responsible for virtually all of the creative input that went into turning the videogame concept into a multimedia enterprise," says the complaint. The suit pegs Mortal Kombat as a $4 billion franchise, and summarily claims that the shape it takes today owes far more to Kasanoff's contributions than Midway's. Ultimately, Kasanoff aims to block the sale of the company, claiming his interests are at stake.