Weekend predictions: Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer go head to head

April 23, 2021

Mortal Kombat

This weekend is shaping up to be a real David and Goliath battle, with indie distributor FUNimation going up against the might of Warner Bros., and looking likely to come out with their heads held high, even if a weekend win looks out of reach.



Mortal Kombat most likely won’t set records this weekend, but it should easily top $10 million, and $20 million isn’t entirely out of the question. Warner Bros. has been releasing movies like this for long enough that the model only needs look at previous releases of similar movies by the studio to form an opinion on what opening weekend might look like. Based on a current market strength estimate of 37%, MK has a predicted opening around $13.5 million. As I’ve mentioned a few times recently, our model might be a lagging indicator right now, since it’s based on the performance of recent films, and increased vaccinations and theater openings should help boost the market.

Personally, I feel like $15 million is a good bet for this release, and it could go somewhat higher than that. If it does, that would point towards continued growth in the market.



Predicting Demon Slayer’s opening is quite challenging, because anime has been growing exponentially in popularity in recent years but has only very recently been getting wide theatrical releases. Doubly challenging is the fact that this is the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, which might draw in some moviegoers out of curiosity. Rumor has it that Demon Slayer should hit $10 million this weekend on the back of this buzz. Our model says that anything over $7 million would be knocking it out the park even if we didn’t have a depressed market due to the pandemic.

Since this is such an unusual release, I won’t be feeding its results into our model (which isn’t to say that I won’t be following its weekend performance closely).





One thing we can be certain of is an up weekend at the box office. It looks a virtual certainty that the top six will earn over $30 million between them. In fact, if Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer both outperform the model then $40 million plus is a possibility, which would be in line with the weekend of April 2, when Godzilla vs. Kong opened with $32.2 million. This would be a great weekend to set a new pandemic benchmark, although that might be a stretch. In any case, having two films earn over $10 million over the weekend would be a welcome “first” for 2021, and has a decent chance of happening.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Godzilla vs. Kong, Voyagers, Mortal Kombat, The Unholy, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba—The Movie: Mugen Train (劇場版「鬼滅の刃」 無限列車編)