Prior to helming the upcoming Mortal Kombat, filmmaker Simon McQuoid was primarily known as a commercial director, with the reboot marking his feature directorial debut. However, it was actually his work on a Star Wars commercial that got the attention of producer Todd Garner.

In a roundtable interview attended by CBR, Garner revealed that his past projects working with commercial directors transitioning to feature films informed him that commercial directors are unafraid of creating a signature filmmaking style.

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"What I learned from [Jerry Bruckheimer] is there are no better shooters than commercial directors, they shoot more film than anybody. I've worked with Michael Bay, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Simon West and the list goes on of commercial directors," Garner reflected. "When I say to you a Ridley Scott or Michael Bay film, you know what that looks like because they're not afraid of creating a style. So I'm not afraid of using commercial directors, having trained under Jerry, and when I saw Simon's work, he's a great shooter. I didn't know too much about him; I knew he was an adult and a thoughtful, smart guy. And then I saw this Super Bowl spot where it was a Star Wars thing with these little kids running through a Star Wars set and it was action and lightsabers and you come out and it's a children's hospital."

Garner was impressed by McQuoid being able to deliver so much authentic emotion in such a short amount of time while the filmmaker wanted to make the reboot a sprawling epic. Thinking of how effective McQuoid's commercial work was, Garner gave the him his seal of approval.

"And just being able to tell a beautiful story [instead of making it full of cuts], in thirty seconds, of these children being their own heroes and you find out they're in a hospital, I tear up just thinking about it now," Garner recalled. "And someone who could be that thoughtful of the characters and that patient, I knew he could do this...he set out to make a movie that was epic, that didn't pander and that had a lot of scope and emotion to it and I saw that in a number of his commercials."

Directed by Simon McQuoid and produced by James Wan, Mortal Kombat stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson "Jax" Bridges, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han and Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Sisi Stringer as Mileena, Matilda Kimber as Emily Young and Laura Brent as Allison Young. The film arrives in theaters and on HBO Max April 16.

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