Mortal Kombat was HBO Max’s most-streamed movie of its 2021 day & date release strategy

Warner Bros. saw mixed results from its day-and-date release strategy which saw them unveiling their 2021 film slate on streaming via HBO Max and in theaters. It’s clear that in some instances it kneecapped the box office for some of their releases (The Suicide Squad and The Matrix Resurrections) while others actually benefitted from the strategy. One film on their roster that really performed well in that regard was Mortal Kombat and now that 2021 has come to an end, the video game adaptation emerged as the most-streamed movie on HBO Max during the day-and-date release model.

According to Business Insider, Mortal Kombat had the best weekend of any of the Warner Bros. releases on HBO Max with a total of 3.8 million viewers during its first few days. The info comes courtesy of Samba TV, which had records for all of the Warner Bros films released on HBO Max in their first four days of release. Godzilla vs Kong came in second with 3.6 million viewers in its first five days and that film was followed by The Suicide Squad with 2.8 million households viewing the films during its opening weekend. The lowest number went to Judas and the Black Messiah, which pulled in a mere 653,000 households.

Mortal Kombat leads the pack of some impressive titles that also include The Many Saints of Newark, Dune, King Richard, In The Heights, and Space Jam: A New Legacy, to name a few. I honestly think Mortal Kombat, much like Godzilla vs Kong, benefitted from being one of the first of their films to test this strategy and it was released when movie theaters were just trying to get back into the swing of things. WarnerMedia has frequently said they were very pleased with Mortal Kombat’s performance on HBO Max and were even surprised by how successful it actually was.

Mortal Kombat cost $55 million to make and while the film tapped out at $42 million domestically, the film grossed $83.6 million worldwide and I’m sure its streaming success ensures that it will at least likely get a sequel via the streaming platform. It has been previously reported that multiple Mortal Kombat movies are in development and since they’re trying to release more original films on HBO Max, this might be the franchise to lead that charge.

Are YOU surprised by the streaming success of Mortal Kombat?