{"id":186190,"date":"2025-08-30T02:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/186190\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T02:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:43:09","slug":"mortal-combat-ii-delayed-2025-box-office-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/186190\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortal Combat II Delayed, 2025 Box Office Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not quite a fatality, but it\u2019s a blow for 2025 improving on last year\u2019s box office<\/a>. \u201cMortal Kombat II<\/a>,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually a good thing for \u201cMortal Kombat II.\u201d The film<\/a> 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Join<\/a> \"Emma<\/a> <\/p>\n

But for the box office on the whole, it\u2019s a bit of a knockout. \u201cMortal Kombat II\u201d likely wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s \u201cFinal Destination: Bloodlines\u201d did<\/a>, bringing in $138 million domestic and $301 million globally. And that\u2019s maybe a conservative estimate for a big piece of video game IP. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cMortal Kombat II\u201d to keep the box office strong and see some growth up from last year\u2019s $8.5 billion, itself down from an $8.9 billion 2023. Two straight years of declines and it\u2019s going to be harder to make the case that one day theaters will recover to pre-pandemic levels. <\/p>\n

Some of the other tentpoles to keep an eye out for in 2025 include \u201cTron: Legacy,\u201d \u201cSpringsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,\u201d \u201cThe Running Man,\u201d \u201cWicked: For Good,\u201d \u201cZootopia 2,\u201d \u201cFive Nights at Freddy\u2019s 2,\u201d and \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash.\u201d At least one of those has to outperform, or something else has to pop, if 2025 is going to keep pace with last year. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to blame Warner Bros.<\/a> and New Line too much for wanting to move \u201cMortal Kombat II.\u201d When it came to dating WB\u2019s \u201cSinners,\u201d \u201cFinal Destination,\u201d \u201cThe Conjuring\u201d sequel, and \u201cSuperman,\u201d \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d was the outlier on the calendar, slotted into October even though it\u2019s not a horror movie and though there was little barometer about how the sequel could perform. The first \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d \u2014 or the rebooted \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d that is after the \u201990s films based on the fighting video games \u2014 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\u2019s other 2021 releases<\/a>). At that time, it was the biggest HBO Max performer ever, even bigger than \u201cDune\u201d or \u201cGodzilla vs. Kong\u201d the same year.<\/p>\n

So when \u201cMortal Kombat II\u201d put up what we\u2019re hearing were very strong testing scores, it felt like there was a lot of untapped upside there that the movie wouldn\u2019t have reached if it opened this fall. That\u2019s hard to ignore when you look at the year Warner Bros. has been having in 2025<\/a>, between films like \u201cMinecraft,\u201d \u201cSinners,\u201d and \u201cWeapons\u201d all outperforming expectations. It\u2019s just a shame \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d won\u2019t get its own shot at adding on to WB\u2019s banner year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not quite a fatality, but it\u2019s a blow for 2025 improving on last year\u2019s box office. \u201cMortal…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":186191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[207,171,1020,49486,53,67,132,68,1021],"class_list":{"0":"post-186190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-box-office","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-mortal-kombat-ii","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-warner-bros"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115115419761135865","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}