It looks like the real opponent for Mortal Kombat 2 will be the box office. The sequel to the 2021 action reboot made a heavy first strike with its incredible Red Band trailer, which garnered over 106 million hits on YouTube in just the first day of its release on July 21. It showed off Karl Urban, who famously plays Billy Butcher in The Boys, as the aging Hollywood martial arts icon Johnny Cage being convinced to enter a tournament to fight on behalf of the Earth (or specifically, Earthrealm). Since then, however, the movie was delayed from its original release date of October 24, 2025 to May 15, 2026, before it changed again to a week earlier on May 8. This is partly why early box office predictions for Mortal Kombat 2 are conservative, suggesting that it may have a tougher road to break even than originally anticipated.
What is Mortal Kombat 2 predicted to make at the box office?
Mortal Kombat 2 is projected to make somewhere between $40 million and $55 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office (as of March 29).
This range comes from a March 27 report from analytics expert BoxOfficeTheory, which notes that the marketing for the film might have come out too strong too early. Several other movies releasing at around the same time as Mortal Kombat 2 are projected to make a bigger splash, with the domestic opener for the biopic Michael (April 24) coming in between $52 million and $75 million and The Devil Wears Prada 2 (May 1) posting similar numbers between $55 million and $80 million. The potential success for both of these films could pull casual viewers away from the martial arts flick.
At the very least, it looks like Mortal Kombat 2 will have better box office numbers than the first film, though that’s not a very high bar considering that it came out during the COVID-19 pandemic. The original 2021 movie earned $23 million in its domestic opener and went on to amass $84 million, split evenly between domestic and international sales. Its production budget of $55 million made its break-even point around $137 million, so the movie fell well short of its box office goals. However, it was still considered a breakout hit when it launched on HBO Max, becoming the streamer’s most successful film launch. So despite the struggle in theaters, it had enough pull for New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel.
By comparison, Mortal Kombat 2 is following a more traditional route to box office success. According to The Numbers, the film has a slightly higher production budget of $68 million, which means that it will need to cross the $170 million barrier (about 2.5 times the budget) to be considered profitable. This could be tough if the film only earns the lower end of $40 million in its domestic opening weekend. On the other hand, commenters on the are more optimistic that the film will do well, with many believing that it will earn around $250 million to $300 million overall. One user is less confident, though, saying that the film will be comparable to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which only earned $174 million worldwide.
That said, fans of the Mortal Kombat game franchise are encouraged by the authenticity of the sequel and Karl Urban’s portrayal of Johnny Cage, alongside returning actors Jessica McNamee (Sonya Blade), Josh Lawson (Kano), Ludi Lin (Liu Kang), Lewis Tan (Cole Young), and more. The film’s story is also closer to the plot of the cult classic Mortal Kombat adaptation from 1995, with Earthrealm fighters being recruited to defeat Shao Kahn and his clan of bloodthirsty warriors, so it feels more like a reboot than the 2021 outing. The movie’s May 8 release date, despite all the maneuvering, is a good spot for a male-driven action film as it won’t have direct genre competitors against Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and Hit Me Hard.