Mortal Kombat II’s Johnny Cage Will Be a “Very Dispirited Character” – NYCC 2025

Speaking on the Mortal Kombat II movie panel at NYCC 2025, actor Karl Urban revealed that the Johnny Cage we meet in the 2026 won’t be the successful action star we know from the classic fighting series.

“Johnny Cage, when we first see him in Mortal Kombat II, is a very dispirited character,” Urban explained.

“HIs career is completely in the tank, he’s not been keeping up with his martial arts training. The world has forgotten who Johnny Cage is. He has very little of that brash cocky Johnny Cage you know from the games, he’s a broken man… Through the course of the movie we get to see him transform into a true champion of Earthrealm and involuntarily get launched into this insane action epic adventure. It’ll blow your minds, man”

“Johnny from the games, the biggest star in the world, isn’t a character you can go on a journey with,” added the movie’s writer Jeremy Slater.

Urban also talked about working with with an ensemble cast, and how the experienced compared to working with the team on The Boys.

“We had such a blast. My [The] Boys crew are family, we’ve been through a lot over the last five years, seasons,” he said.

“To walk into this movie and to walk onto something that was preexisting with the incredible cast that did such phenomenal work in the first movie.. We were coming into a preexisting family and they welcomed us with open arms. We bonded really well and had a lot of fun. This movie was probably the most challenging – technically, physically, mentally – undertaking that I’ve ever attempted in my career. We had just the most amazing stunt team. We hung and we hung tough. We’re a family.”

New Line Cinema describes the Mortal Kombat sequel as “the latest high-stakes installment in the blockbuster video game franchise in all its brutal glory. This time, the fan favorite champions—now joined by Johnny Cage himself (Karl Urban)—are pitted against one another in the ultimate, no-holds barred, gory battle to defeat the dark rule of Shao Kahn that threatens the very existence of the Earthrealm and its defenders.” It will debut in theaters May 15, 2026.

For more from NYCC, check out everything revealed by Marvel and the new Star Trek: Starfleet Academy trailer.

Rachel Weber is the Senior Editorial Director of Games at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, and French Bulldogs. Those extra wrinkles on her face are thanks to going time blind and staying up too late finishing every sidequest in RPGs like Fallout and Witcher 3.