With the power of a roundhouse kick, Mortal Kombat 2 has received a higher box office prediction than originally expected. This follow-up to the martial-arts reboot in 2021 set records for its red band trailer back in July 2025, and it was so successful that Warner Bros. decided to push its original release date of October 14, 2025 to May 8, 2026, where it could potentially perform better as a summer blockbuster. In late March, the video game adaptation received a conservative box office prediction that suggested it might struggle to be profitable, but a new projection shows that momentum is growing for the action flick.
Mortal Kombat 2 gets a better shot at being a box office success
Mortal Kombat 2 is expected to earn somewhere in the range of $50 million to $60 million in its domestic opening weekend, according to a mid-April forecast from BoxOffice Pro. To put this into context against the domestic openers for other films released in 2026, Pixar’s Hoppers earned $45 million and Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary received $80 million.
Still, this new projection is a notable increase from an earlier prediction made by BoxOfficeTheory that had the film settling for a domestic opener of $40 million to $55 million. An April 10 report from the analytics site believed that the sequel would bring in around $96 million, more specifically in the range of $80 million to $120 million, over the course of its entire domestic run. Presale tickets for Mortal Kombat 2 were made available last week, so if those numbers are encouraging, it will raise box office projections even further.
Mortal Kombat 2 will need to surpass the $170 million mark to break even, based on its estimated production budget of $68 million, as noted by The Numbers. So the new projection suggests that it will have an easier time being a profitable production for the franchise. Its 2021 predecessor had the misfortune of coming out near the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t perform well at the box office, earning only $84 million on a $55 million budget. Its record-breaking streaming numbers on HBO Max, though, were high enough for the film to warrant a sequel.
Much of the hype for Mortal Kombat 2 comes from fans wanting to see Karl Urban’s portrayal of the down-on-his-luck Hollywood action star Johnny Cage. The New Zealand actor is enjoying a lot of attention due to The Boys, whose fifth and final season will be airing while the movie hits theaters on May 8 (that could also be part of the reason why Warner Bros. moved its release to this time of the year). Trailers for the sequel have focused on Johnny Cage as the main attraction with him being selected to become a representative of Earthrealm in a fighting tournament that pits him and his fellow allies against Shao Kahn’s forces. In that way, Mortal Kombat 2 is more of a nostalgic reboot of the cult classic 1995 film than its predecessor was.
It also helps that the upcoming movie effectively stands alone in the theatrical release calendar as an action flick. The competition may look stiff with the biopic Michael releasing on April 24 and The Devil Wears Prada 2 coming out on May 1, but Mortal Kombat 2 is courting a much different demographic than those two blockbusters.
For these reasons, the sequel surprisingly found itself on Fandango’s list of the most-anticipated summer movies this year based on the votes of over 6,000 respondents. The film placed eighth between Minions & Monsters and Supergirl, and made its way onto the list over other action movies, like The Mandalorian & Grogu and Masters of the Universe.
