Back in 2021, WB’s Mortal Kombat reboot movie faced an uphill battle at the box office, released deep into the Covid-19 pandemic that crippled the box office. The film ended up making $84 million worldwide, a number the upcoming sequel hopes to deliver a gruesome fatality to. Mortal Kombat II, well, it can’t blame the pandemic for any box office woes.
Warner Bros. will release Mortal Kombat II in U.S. theaters on October 24, and the film is already off to a strong start in terms of audience interest and engagement. The film’s trailer was released last week and Deadline is now reporting that it broke a viewership record.
Deadline reports, “WaveMetrix data reports that the latest trailer for the Simon McQuoid sequel has notched 106.8M worldwide views in its first 24 hours after being dropped on Thursday, July 17 at 9AM PST — the best ever for a red-band trailer.”
You may recall that the 2021 movie’s red band trailer was also a record-breaker at the time, amassing 116 million views in its first week. But again, that movie was released during the pandemic and also debuted at home on Max on the very same day it was released in theaters, so it’s hard to tell how successful the upcoming sequel will be under very different conditions.
Karl Urban stars as Johnny Cage, alongside Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, with Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano as Raiden, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han, and Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion.
This time, the fan favorite champions—now joined by Johnny Cage himself—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.