It’s not quite a fatality, but it’s a blow for 2025 improving on last year’s box office. “Mortal Kombat II,” one of the more anticipated fall releases in terms of genre movie IP, is moving from a release in October 2025 to now opening in theaters May 15, 2026.
It’s actually a good thing for “Mortal Kombat II.” The film gets out of a stacked October and into a better slot in the prime of next summer where it could be a breakout hit. That’s at least the feeling from multiple sources, who told IndieWire the film moved as a response to the huge reception the video game movie sequel received from both early test screenings and from the recently released trailer, which has done record numbers for a red-band trailer.
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But for the box office on the whole, it’s a bit of a knockout. “Mortal Kombat II” likely wasn’t going to be a billion dollar surprise hit, in fact the studio projects that in a May timeframe next year, it could do similar numbers to what this summer’s “Final Destination: Bloodlines” did, bringing in $138 million domestic and $301 million globally. And that’s maybe a conservative estimate for a big piece of video game IP.
Taking it out of 2025 though just leaves one fewer movie with that sleeper potential and the shot in the arm exhibitors really need. As of this past weekend, the domestic box office is at $5.88 billion just five percent ahead of where 2024 was at this same point last year, according to data from Comscore. But exhibitors depended on a movie like “Mortal Kombat II” to keep the box office strong and see some growth up from last year’s $8.5 billion, itself down from an $8.9 billion 2023. Two straight years of declines and it’s going to be harder to make the case that one day theaters will recover to pre-pandemic levels.
Some of the other tentpoles to keep an eye out for in 2025 include “Tron: Legacy,” “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” “The Running Man,” “Wicked: For Good,” “Zootopia 2,” “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” At least one of those has to outperform, or something else has to pop, if 2025 is going to keep pace with last year.
It’s hard to blame Warner Bros. and New Line too much for wanting to move “Mortal Kombat II.” When it came to dating WB’s “Sinners,” “Final Destination,” “The Conjuring” sequel, and “Superman,” “Mortal Kombat” was the outlier on the calendar, slotted into October even though it’s not a horror movie and though there was little barometer about how the sequel could perform. The first “Mortal Kombat” — or the rebooted “Mortal Kombat” that is after the ’90s films based on the fighting video games — was a pandemic release in 2021 and made $84.4 million worldwide, a respectable number considering it also opened day-and-date on HBO Max (as did all of WB’s other 2021 releases). At that time, it was the biggest HBO Max performer ever, even bigger than “Dune” or “Godzilla vs. Kong” the same year.
So when “Mortal Kombat II” put up what we’re hearing were very strong testing scores, it felt like there was a lot of untapped upside there that the movie wouldn’t have reached if it opened this fall. That’s hard to ignore when you look at the year Warner Bros. has been having in 2025, between films like “Minecraft,” “Sinners,” and “Weapons” all outperforming expectations. It’s just a shame “Mortal Kombat” won’t get its own shot at adding on to WB’s banner year.
