Audiences are clearly hyped for Warner Bros.’ next couple of action-packed blockbusters, if the massive views racked up by their trailers are any indication. Godzilla vs. Kong became the studio’s most-watched promo on YouTube after it hauled in over 25 million streams across the company’s affiliated YouTube channels in the first 24 hours it was available, and Mortal Kombat has now gone one better.
The video game reboot has scored the most popular red band trailer in history after being watched a whopping 116 million times in its first week online. To put that into perspective, that dwarfs the numbers pulled in by Logan and Deadpool 2, which would go on to earn $619 million and $785 million respectively at the box office.
Of course, even if the theatrical industry hadn’t spent the last year struggling to drum up business, there’s no indication that Mortal Kombat would be able to hit those sorts of commercial heights, given that the highest-grossing video game movie ever remains Duncan Jones’ Warcraft with a haul of $439 million, but it’s still hugely encouraging news for Warner Bros.
After all, the genre is trying to escape a reputation for consistently underwhelming both critics and fans, but based on the reactions to the first Mortal Kombat footage, director Simon McQuoid looks to have delivered a real winner. Even those that don’t have much affinity with the source material appear to have gotten a kick out of the explosive footage from the martial arts fantasy actioner, and if the movie can parlay those YouTube views into a combination of solid box office returns and a spike in HBO Max subscribers, then we’re certainly going to have a franchise on our hands.