Billy Butcher seems to be swapping his knives for his fists (even though he doesn’t actually use knives on The Boys, but you understand what I’m saying here). The Boys actor Karl Urban will reportedly be joining the upcoming Mortal Kombat sequel, according to The Wrap.
Urban is expected to play Johnny Cage, the cocky action movie star with a talent for martial arts, who was teased at the end of 2021’s Mortal Kombat. Cage first appeared in the original 1992 release of Mortal Kombat and has appeared in nearly every iteration of the game and its 1995 movie adaptation. The popular character was famously left out of the first installment, for fear that he would overpower the rest of the movie. So now he is expected to overpower the sequel.
Due to his larger-than-life movie star personality, fans had been pulling for a Ryan Reynolds-type to play Cage in the upcoming adaptation, but he’s busy playing another vigilante jerk. Urban is no stranger to pairing his fight scenes with sarcastic one-liners, so this casting makes sense! Urban has also lent his crime-fighting talents to Thor: Ragnarok and Star Trek, so he might as well grab another franchise by the neck after season four of The Boys wrapped early last month.
The installment is scheduled to begin filming in Australia from June to September. The same team from the first film will be returning, with Simon McQuoid back as director. Even though several of the main characters from the first film were killed (it’s in the title, after all), McQuoid confirmed that death isn’t really permanent in the universe, so whoever can return will. All you have to do is restart the game and you get more lives! Everyone knows this.