Hollywood court case threatens Warners Midway acquisition

The maker of the Mortal Kombat films has filed a lawsuit against Midway that could prevent Warner from buying the struggling publisher.

Threshold Entertainment’s chairman and CEO Lawrence Kasanoff is suing Midway in the US Bankruptcy Court over the intellectual property interests in the Mortal Kombat series, GamePolitics reports.

The case could block Warner Bros’ proposed $33 million purchase of Midway’s assets, including the rights to Mortal Kombat.

Kasanoff is demanding the right to create derivative film and television projects based on the beat-em-up franchise, as well as copyrights to certain characters, including Sonya Blade and Scorpion. He claims his company’s work with the series’ assets has been crucial to Mortal Kombat’s success.

In his official complaint, Kasanoff said: 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 video games.

On their own, the video games 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 video game concept into a multimedia enterprise.”