Mortal Kombat film advancing, Mass Effect movie still being mulled

The past week has seen new updates on two major game-to-film adaptations. First up, the proposed reboot of the Mortal Kombat film franchise seems to be moving ahead, albeit ever so slowly. First revealed via a producer's lawsuit against now-defunct publisher Midway, the project would be the first Mortal Kombat movie since 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. It would also be the first big-screen adaptation of the fighting franchise since Warner Bros. bought the Mortal Kombat IP from Midway last July.

Although the Mortal Kombat movie's production appears to have missed a rumored September start date, horror-film blog Bloody Disgusting reports that screenwriter Oren Uziel has been tapped by Warner Bros. to pen its script. Though none of his screenplays have been turned into feature films, Uziel's Shimmer Lake was on the 2009 "Black List" of top unproduced scripts in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, the big-screen adaptation of Mass Effect has resurfaced a year and a half after reports of its existence appeared. Last week, Mass Effect 2 project director Casey Hudson told MTV Movies that, "Obviously we have a tremendous amount of interest from people in Hollywood to make a major motion picture about Mass Effect."

Appearing to contradict a 2008 Variety report (linked above), Hudson made it sound as if any deal to license a Mass Effect film production was a ways off. "We're just looking at our options there but waiting to make sure we have something really right before we do it," he said. "The most important thing for us is…we don't just want to see a movie get made. We want to see a great movie get made, if it's going to get done at all."