With video game films the new hot item in Hollywood, Warner Bros. has its own addition to that bonanza with New Line’s “Mortal Kombat II,” which got a new sneak peek at CinemaCon.
In the new clip, we see a shot of Outworld, where Liu Kang asks Baraka and his kind to rebel against the planet’s emperor Shao Khan. Baraka flatly refuses…so the cocky Johnny Cage does what he does best: call Baraka a “giant f**king pussy.”
So Baraka and Cage do what “Mortal Kombat” characters do best: fight. But the Hollywood star played by Karl Urban immediately realizes that he’s in over his head, and the fight soon becomes less of a duel between warriors and more of a cat-and mouse fight as Baraka throws Cage through ceilings.
After a few beatings, though, Johnny’s ego overcomes his fear, with some help from some advice from Sonya Blade: “You’re an actor…so act.”
The glasses go on, and we get the over-the-top duel that “Mortal Kombat” fans want from these movies, culminating with Johnny Cage winning with a move gamers will know well: a roundhouse punch to the nuts.
“Mortal Kombat II” was initially set for release last October was instead moved to May in a slot that New Line found huge box office success with last year with “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” which became that horror franchise’s highest grossing film with $317.8 million worldwide.
The first “Mortal Kombat” was released in 2021 and was one of the films tasked with bringing moviegoers back to theaters after the COVID-19 shutdown. The vast majority of auditoriums that the film screened in practiced social distancing protocols in between seats, reducing the number of tickets that could be sold.
Between that and the slow return of the masses to theaters, “Mortal Kombat” grossed just $84.4 million worldwide. In the years since, video game films like “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” and currently, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” have become some of the highest grossing films of the year.
While “Mortal Kombat II” probably won’t reach the heights of those films, Hollywood is betting that the surge in interest in video game films will extend to M-rated games that become R-rated adaptations. In its CinemaCon presentation, Sony announced that it would adapt the gory 2015 Playstation game “Bloodborne,” joining a slate that also includes Justin Lin’s adaptation of “Helldivers.”
“Mortal Kombat II” hits theaters May 8.
