Mortal Kombat is a video game franchise originally developed by Midway Games‘ Chicago studio in 1992. Following Midway’s bankruptcy, the Mortal Kombat development team was acquired by Warner Bros. and turned into NetherRealm Studios. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment currently owns the rights of the franchise and rebooted it in 2009. The development of the first game was originally based on an idea that Ed Boon and John Tobias had of making a video game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but as that idea fell through, a fantasy–horror themed fighting game titled Mortal Kombat was created instead. The original game has spawned many sequels and has spun a media franchise consisting of several action-adventure games, films (animated and live-action with its own sequel), and television series (animated and live-action).