Todd Garner, the producer of the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, knows you want to see Johnny Cage. He's been a fan favorite since the very first game, and in the 1995 movie, I believe he gets one of the strongest character arcs. But this new Mortal Kombat film doesn't feature him, no matter how much you think Lewis Tan is playing him. And when Garner explained why to a roundtable interview I attended alongside several other journalists, he opened the door to a possible extended Mortal Kombat universe that should have fans very, very excited, for the Cage of it all and beyond.

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"The reason we held back Johnny Cage is he is a very egotistical guy, he's a scoundrel, he's funny, he's bigger than life," explained Garner. "And so is Kano [played in the film by Josh Lawson]. And so you go, 'Alright, are we just gonna have two guys competing to see who can out-funny each other and ego each other in this movie? Or do you hold Johnny Cage back because, God willing, we're able to do another one?'" For Garner, Johnny Cage is an ace in the hole for ordering a sequel from Warner Bros. ("I got Johnny Cage, guys, I can make this!"), equivalent to him telling his kids, "If you do this, we get to go to DisneyLand." Garner also explained why Rain was cut in favor of Reptile quite simply: "They both cloak. You don't want two cloaking guys. First of all, it's expensive, and second of all, they do the same thing."

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Image via Warner Bros.

And then, Garner started to tease out the incredible storytelling and fan-pleasing implications of using such a deep bench of mythology as an inspiration for an extended cinematic universe:

"There are people we can see later. There's also characters that have such complicated backstories with other characters, you wanna give them more service. I keep saying, 'I wanna do nine hours of WandaVision in this thing. Whatever is our version of that. Maybe it's just the monks, just Liu Kang and Kung Lao, nine hours of them. I'm in.' There's so much to draw from. So we were trying to be as intelligent as we possibly could to tell a story that you could just come in and sit down and not know what Mortal Kombat is and enjoy it, and by the end, be as big a fan as the guy who's played the game for 30 years and knows everything about everything... There's certain things I would've loved to have had in the movie, and I couldn't. Cost and practicality and things like that, just going off on a weird tangent for 20 minutes for something that's not to the core story. So our goal and our prayer is that this movie does well enough and we've set it up enough and is satisfying enough for both the fans and people who don't know anything about Mortal Kombat, that they're gonna allow us at some point to sit with [game creators] Ed [Boon] and John [Tobias] and all the Warner Brothers execs and put a big whiteboard up like Kevin Feige did and map out the universe, and map out years and years of this. That's my prayer."

"Years and years" of Mortal Kombat screen stories, for movies and TV! If you're a big MK fan and want to see Garner's vision for an MKCU come to life — visions that include this aforementioned Shaolin Monks series, "a Kabal movie," and a war movie with Jax and Sonya — looks like you better get to watching Mortal Kombat as soon as it drops in theaters and HBO Max April 16, 2021.

KEEP READING: 'Mortal Kombat' Producer Todd Garner Explains the Movie's Long Development, Including MCU Influences