Ed Boon wanted every character in Mortal Kombat 1 to be voiced by a celebrity

Celebrity cameos have been a thing for a while in Mortal Kombat. In 2019, we saw Sonya Blade played by Ronda Rousey in Mortal Kombat 11, and we also got to see Arnold Schwarzenegger voice the Terminator. Now, in Mortal Kombat 1, we're going to see John Cena as Peacemaker, J.K. Simmons as Omni Man, and we've already got Megan Fox as Nitara.

However, Ed Boon wanted even more cameos. Speaking with Rolling Stone, he revealed that NetherRealm desperately tried to get John Wick in the game. "We tried to get - John Wick - in Mortal Kombat, and we didn't get it," he said.

Boon also wishes to go even further, and one of the pipe dreams he had was having every character played by an actor. "One of the things that I entertained with this game - and this is the 10 out of 10 version - which we didn't do, was, 'What if every character in this game was played by an actor?' Like we got Keanu Reeves to play Kenshi... this is, like, pipe dream. We're not even thinking of their salaries and all that stuff. What if we made a game that had an actor, a famous, recognizable actor play every character and Johnny Cage was absolutely the one who would have been played by Jean-Claude Van Damme."

"So, the thought did come to us. But at some point, I don't know if he would have wanted to do motion-capture work, or if he [says], 'Just scan my face and have somebody else do all the whatever stuff.' There are hundreds of lines of dialogue that they have to read. A lot of actors don't realize just how sophisticated video games are. When you sign up for it, you're not just signing up to go in one day, be in the recording studio for an hour, and you're done. It's like a real acting job."

Do you think an all-celebrity cast in Mortal Kombat would work?