The smash success of 1995’s Mortal Kombat was a surprise to nearly everyone who was a part of the process. After all, this was just a few short years after the utter bombs that were Super Mario Bros. and Double Dragon. Yeah, Street Fighter did alright (I freakin’ love that movie) but it wasn’t what studios had hoped for. So what chance did a game about people beating each other until violent deaths ensued have a chance? Apparently, it had a $122 million worldwide gross chance!

In a new interview, the crew of the film and Ed Boon, creator of the series, discuss the process of the film going from arcade video game to theaters.

Producer Larry Kasanoff explains how the process began:

I played the Mortal Kombat arcade game in their office for half an hour. I turned to [former Midway Games chief] Neil D. Nicastro and I said, “This is Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. This is not just an arcade game. This is a whole phenomenon.” I said, “If you give me the rights to this, I promise you I will produce this, not just in movies, but in every medium in the world.” He looked at me and said, “You’re full of crap! It’s just an arcade game!” That began a three-month process of me trying to convince them that it was more than just an arcade game. They didn’t believe it… I finally just wore them down and they optioned the rights to me for an insanely short amount of time, which now I would never do, but it was my first deal at my company.

Game creator Ed Boon admits that he himself didn’t believe it would happen:

When the movie was being discussed, I remember not taking it seriously at first. I thought, “This is probably going to be talked about but not happen.” Then all of a sudden we were getting phone calls about casting…

Associate producer Lauri Apelian explains that there were many directors that were being considered for the film, stating, “We were getting submissions for top, top directors. Directors with whole lists of important, wonderful films. I really wanted to find someone who would have an innovative, fresh approach.” She states that she went to a CAA screening of Shopping, the first film from director Paul W.S. Anderson, and was “…totally blown away with the talent he had in it.”

Anderson himself explains where his love for the title came from and how he was immediately incredibly focused in creating something special:

I grew up in a northern industrial town called Newcastle Upon Tyne, where there was no film industry. I would come to London for meetings when I was trying to get my career off the ground. Quite often, I’d have a meeting at 10 o’clock in the morning and 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I didn’t know anybody in London, so all I would do is play video games for three or four hours at the arcade. One of my favorites was Mortal Kombat. So when I heard they were making a movie of Mortal Kombat, most filmmakers were being a bit snooty about it. I was super-enthusiastic.

When it came to filming the movie, it wasn’t an easy process. Anderson himself admits that this was his first movie with fight sequences, so he had to learn on the job.

“In fight scenes, you use the wide shot for maybe like two seconds, and that’s it. You’re always in for the tight coverage for the impacts, he explains. “It was a movie I learned a lot on, and I was very fortunate to be working with people who were supportive and didn’t bite my head off when I made them repeatedly do fights in wide shots.”

Furthermore, the Goro suit became a serious problem on the set, costing $1 million dollars and suffering breakdowns on a regular basis.

“Goro became the diva of the set. Everyone would joke about it and say, “Goro won’t come out of his trailer,”” Anderson jokes. “There was a production meeting where we discussed taking Goro to Thailand, and I said, “that’s never going to happen. He’s barely behaving himself in a studio in Burbank. I don’t know what he’d do in Thailand.””

“Goro was created by Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis from Amalgamated Dynamics. Tom was the guy in the Alien costume for Alien 3. Goro was a big creation, with a lot of computers and a lot of guys working around him,” Anderson states.

Production designer Jonathan A. Carlson dives deeper into the problems with Goro, explaining, “That guy had 13 to 16 puppeteers. The cables were going all over the place. One guy would be doing the eyeballs. The other guy would be doing the eyebrows. The other guy would be manipulating something else.”

The full interview, which features interviews with Christopher Lambert (“Raiden”), Robin Shou (“Liu Kang”), Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (“Sonya Blade”), and more, can be read over at The Hollywood Reporter.