Game Politics is reporting that Mortal Kombat movie production company Threshold Entertainment is seeking to gain partial ownership rights of some of the Mortal Kombat intellectual property, including film and television rights. Here is an excerpt from their complaint sent to the US Bankrupcy Court.

The Mortal Kombat series, as it stands today, is far more a creation of Threshold and Kasanoff than of Midway. Midway's creative input was almost entirely limited to the videogames. 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.

This is highly unusual seeing as appears to fans that his company Threshold Entertainment stopped supporting the Mortal Kombat franchise many years ago. Just look at their website MortalKombat.com which hasn't been updated in over five years, and has no real great content to speak of that could benefit the series. Not to mention they never got around to releasing the fan favorite TV series, Mortal Kombat Conquest on DVD, or even given fans better quality releases of the original movies.

Not to mention the outrageous "flat, stock characters" claim, which can be easily disputed by reading Gamespot's History of Mortal Kombat (which was co-written by TRMK's own Jeff Greeson) and almost entirely sourced by the games themselves.

It is likely that this could hold up the Midway sale process which was to wrap in the next few weeks. We personally hope that Threshold loses their claim of ownership rights so a better studio, like Warner Bros. maybe, can properly re-introduce the world to the Mortal Kombat universe via film someday.

OMFG, seriously? SERIOUSLY? i am gonna go rage and then come back and reply something that may make sense..

Yeah, what a load. Minimal back-story and mythology? Maybe for every fighting game franchise but MK. Flat, stock characters? If they were talking about the movies' renditions of the characters, then yes, they are absolutely flat, stock versions of the characters we know and love. Ludicrous.

Yeeeaaahhhh... Of course, MK Annihlation did sooo much to add character development. That's why Johnny Cage, one of the focal points of the first movie, was killed off at the beginning. They couldn't even get Paul Anderson to direct. Post screams nothing but a production company looking for money at a time when they're still trying to get the third movie done; maybe my tone will change in the future.. ....just don't count on it

Of all the people that might get their hands on MK... as if they didn't F it up enough in the 2nd movie when they took over completely instead of involving the creators... what a crock. I wasn't even aware Threshold was still active, have they done anything in the last few years at all?

Bunch of crap this. While the first MK movie MIGHT have had some impact on the way the characters' personalities developed in the games from then on there is no evidence to suggest the rich mythology afforded to the MK universe owes anything to MK: Conquest or the films. I can only hope that somebody with some knowledge of the games and films can provide the legal equivalent of what I just said. I know some court judge won't know the difference and might take this claim on its face. That absolutely cannot happen.

Lets see... Kano gained an accent from the movie... Kitana becomes Liu Kang's girlfriend.... Raiden the guardian of E. Realm... Erm... Er... Nope.... Can't find anything else here just those 3 things. This is tarnishing my image of the movie, I know that much. Suddenly one of my classic fav.s is looking uninteresting. They didn't even match the plot to the games overall anyway. One of the better game-movie attempts, but not one that impacted much. Esp. when you take a failed sequel into account. Also... "Bankrupt" is important here. They want money to keep going. Someone's greedy, has eaten their pie and now wants a piece of someone else's pie. Edit: Also Midway is under sale as it is, it has no money to do anything with. What does one bankrupt company expect to get from another bankrupt company thats also being sold?