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.
These two took a famous video games franchise and made some movies based upon it - one good, if somewhat cheesy; the other appalling - and yet that somehow entitles them to the IP? It's not like they took the franchise in a radically new direction or re-envisaged it - the films were no Battlestar Galactica jobby. By that logic Batman would be owned by Christopher Nolan and Frodo by Peter Jackson. It's utterly retarded.
Anyway, I don't know enough about IP law to judge whether they would have a case, but some of the complaint seems reasonable assuming the original agreement is as they claim.These two took a famous video games franchise and made some movies based upon it - one good, if somewhat cheesy; the other appalling - and yet that somehow entitles them to the IP? It's not like they took the franchise in a radically new direction or re-envisaged it - the films were no Battlestar Galactica jobby. By that logic Batman would be owned by Christopher Nolan and Frodo by Peter Jackson. It's utterly retarded.
Don't forget Mortal Kombat: Conquest...
Kasanoff and Threshold were responsible for virtually all of the creative input that went into turning the videogame concept into a multimedia enterprise.