The numbers are in, and Mortal Kombat 2 is unfortunately fighting just to break even at the box office. The martial-arts action flick underperformed in its opening weekend, earning $63 million worldwide, missing its expected projection of $80 million. This is despite the movie breaking records with its Red Band trailer in July 2025 that received over 100 million views on YouTube and the sequel earning a 64% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the 55% rating for its 2021 predecessor. As for what went wrong, Mortal Kombat 2 squandered its early advantage, effectively spending too much time charging its super move and whiffing badly when the moment mattered most.
Mortal Kombat 2 had exceedingly bad timing as a summer release
Delving deeper into the box office numbers for Mortal Kombat 2, it struggled to grab audiences overseas. Domestically, the sequel brought in $40 million in its opener, falling near the low end of its predicted range of $40 million to $60 million. Internationally, it only made $23 million for a $63 million worldwide haul. Since then, as of May 14, this has improved to $71 million, according to Box Office Mojo, but its international haul of $26 million is still only 37% (that’s rounding up) of its overall total.
As reported by Variety, the production budget for Mortal Kombat 2 is $80 million, which is nearly 50% higher than the $55 million budget for 2021’s Mortal Kombat. Since wide-release movies typically need to earn 2.5 times its budget to break even, the film has to cross the $200 million mark to be considered a box office success. However, the latest estimates have the movie only making around $125 million to $130 million worldwide by the time its theatrical run is through.
These lower numbers are largely due to its competition in what is a packed theatrical release calendar, where the sequel with its May 8 release date has been forced to fight against The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael. While these two blockbusters are hardly in the same genre as Mortal Kombat 2, it pulled casual moviegoers away and stole nearly all of the oxygen at the cinema. A popular female-driven film like The Devil Wears Prada 2 was always going to have the advantage during Mother’s Day Weekend, while Michael is a biopic of one of the most popular musical artists of all time. And that’s before the film has to contend with Star Wars: Mandalorian & Grogu, which arrives two weeks after its release on May 22.
The sad part is that this situation could have been avoided. Mortal Kombat 2 had an original release date of October 24, 2025, during a time when it would have faced little competition. It would have battled against Black Phone 2, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Bugonia, and the Chainsaw Man anime movie. However, at the time director Simon McQuoid explained that the movie was pushed to May 15, 2026 (it was moved to May 8 later), because it was like “a massive summer blockbuster” and that the delay was the result of them being “a victim of our own success.” Indeed, it was.
According to producer Todd Garner in September 2025, per Fortress of Solitude, the movie was “done” and didn’t require any more work, so the seven-month delay was an unforced error. Instead of the film striking while the iron was hot, its dedicated video game fanbase had to wait half a year as its momentum slowed to a crawl.
In better news, Mortal Kombat 3 is already in the works, as Jeremy Slater is already writing the screenplay for the movie. So regardless of how the MK2 does at the box office, New Line Cinema and Atomic Monster look like they’re committed to the sequel. It’s possible that the movie will perform well on streaming as well, given the success that the first movie had on HBO Max.
