The fourth film in the Mortal Kombat franchise has arrived, with director Simon McQuoid‘s Mortal Kombat II hitting theaters over the weekend. The good news for Warner Bros., New Line, and the property at large? MK II just had the highest opening weekend in MK history.
A touch behind The Devil Wears Prada 2, Mortal Kombat II came in second place on the domestic charts in its debut weekend with $40 million at the box office across 3,503 theaters.
Worldwide, Mortal Kombat II fought its way to a $63 million opening weekend haul.
As you may recall, 2021’s Mortal Kombat movie opened to $23 million in the U.S. and ended up making a total of $84 million worldwide, but there’s a huge asterisk attached to that one. Releasing smack dab in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, WB’s Mortal Kombat reboot was simultaneously released in theaters and on HBO Max, cannibalizing the film’s box office.
In fact, the 2021 movie’s entire domestic haul was just $43 million, a number its sequel is going to rocket past in just the first few days of release. These numbers serve as proof positive that the 2021 movie would’ve performed far better had it not been a pandemic release.
The bad news? The reported production budget for Mortal Kombat II was $80 million, with a sizable marketing spend on top of that figure. The film will need to have legs in the coming weeks if it hopes to hit profitability at the box office, which is still quite a ways off even with an opening weekend haul that absolutely dwarfs the pandemic opening of the film’s predecessor.
That being said, writer Jeremy Slater had already announced last October that Mortal Kombat III was in development, so it seems Warner Bros. is all-in on the MK film franchise.
Slater announced at NYCC, “Our friends at New Line and Warner Bros. are so happy with [Mortal Kombat II], they are so excited, they are so convinced that there is a giant fanbase waiting for it, that they have already hired me to start writing the next installment.”
Plans change on a dime in Hollywood, of course, but we’ll keep you posted as we learn more.
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In Mortal Kombat II, the fan-favorite champions — now joined by Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) — are pitted against one another in the ultimate, no-holds barred, gory battle to defeat the dark rule of Shao Kahn that threatens the very existence of the Earthrealm and its defenders.
Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano, Joe Taslim, and Hiroyuki Sanada are also part of the ensemble cast of Mortal Kombat II fighters.
From New Line Cinema, James Wan’s Atomic Monster, Broken Road Productions, and Fireside Films, Mortal Kombat II is rated R for “strong bloody violence and gore, and language.”