Mortal Kombat 2, the sequel to the 2021 Mortal Kombat film, is slated to start showing at Imax theaters starting on October 24, 2025. Mortal Kombat 2 is set to follow Cole Young, the protagonist of Mortal Kombat and descendent of Hanzo Hasashi, and his story once again.
The story will be written by Jeremy Slater, known for his work on Moon Knight on the Disney+ subscription. Simon McQuoid will be returning as the director for Mortal Kombat 2.
At the end of the first film, Cole Young was on his way to recruit Johnny Cage as one of Earthrealm’s champions for the upcoming tournament. As such, it’s expected that Johnny Cage will be one of the characters this time around despite being absent in the last film.
WWE’s Michael “The Miz” Mizanin was charismatically attempting to secure the role of Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 2 after seeing the movie and after how his name began trending on Twitter. Many fans were hopeful that Mizanin would play the role of Johnny Cage in the sequel.
“‘Oh man, he’s coming in part two, episode two.’ And then with my name, literally the next, when it came out, it was like a Friday, my name was trending with Johnny Cage,” said Mizanin. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It wasn’t a bunch of people. It was my name. And I was like, ‘This is crazy.'”
Ultimately though, the role went to Karl Urban, best known for his role as Billy Butcher from The Boys. Despite this, it would seem that Mizanin is supportive of Urban playing Johnny Cage, and claims that he’s still excited to see Mortal Kombat 2.
“And then I heard Karl Urban got it, and I was like, ‘Wow,'” declared Mizanin. “And people were like, ‘Are you mad? Are you angry?’ And it’s like, I never get mad or angry when someone else gets a part that I want.”
“I am fully supportive of a person getting… I imagine they’re going to work as hard as I will work to make sure that that character is honed in, locked in, and is the character that the audience wants and loves.”
Aside from that, other castings include Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Tadanobu Asano as Raiden, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Joe Taslim as Noob Saibot, Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, Josh Lawson as Kano, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Tati Gabrielle as Jade, Adeline Rudolph as Kitana, Martyn Ford as Shao Kahn, Desmond Chiam, Ana Thu Nguyen as Queen Sindel, Damon Herriman as Quan Chi, and CJ. Bloomfield as Baraka.
Technically speaking, Taslim, Lawson, Huang’s characters — Sub-Zero, Kano, and Kung Lao respectively — were killed off in the last movie. However, Sub-Zero is returning as Noob Saibot, Kano now likely has a cybernetic eye, and Kung Lao has become a revenant.
Quan Chi being in the movie is also interesting considering his history with Scorpion and Sub-Zero. In Mortal Kombat, it was believed that Sub-Zero was the one who killed Hanzo Hasashi’s family before killing him, but this second movie may once again reveal the twist that Quan Chi framed Bi-Han before his encounter with Hasashi.
Though Velociraptor, Catalyst, and I all saw the movie and had less than stellar things to say about it in our review of it, to the movie’s credit, it did earn $84 million worldwide.