“A Minecraft Movie” isn’t just a hit — after three weekends in theaters, the film is estimated to have grossed $344 million domestically and $720 million worldwide. That makes it the biggest movie of an admittedly underwhelming year at the box office (so far), and the second biggest video game movie of all time.
Coming two years after the massive success of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.36 billion worldwide), and amidst the continued popularity of “Sonic the Hedgehog” films, it’s probably safe to say Hollywood’s video game adaptation curse has been broken.
In fact, one anonymous studio executive told the Financial Times that video games have “replaced comic books as the next frontier of IP to be explored.” And just as superhero movies generally became more faithful to their source material during the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this executive said that the key to a successful video game movie is “fan service” — i.e., staying true to “the characters and the milieu of the game and the attention to detail.”
It also seems noteworthy that the biggest game-to-movie success stories have been kid-friendly titles like “Minecraft” (adapted from the Mojang Studios sandbox game first released in 2011) and “Super Mario,” while the most successful game adaptations for adults — namely, “Fallout” and “The Last of Us” — were made for streaming and TV.
“A Minecraft Movie” also benefited from some viral luck, after TikTok videos inspired young fans to scream, jump around, throw popcorn, and more, during a key scene when actor Jack Black yells the immortal words, “Chicken jockey!”
Apparently, some theater owners are ambivalent about the #GentleMinions-like trend, but the filmmakers have embraced it, with director Jared Hess telling Entertainment Weekly that it’s “weird when you’re having too much fun and the cops get called.” And it’s certainly turned the act of seeing “A Minecraft Movie” in theaters into a real event.
The film was actually unseated from the top of the box office charts this weekend, with a surprise victory for the original horror film “Sinners.” But “Minecraft” still made an estimated $41.3 million domestically in its third weekend, suggesting that those box office totals are going to keep going up.
And yes, it sounds like Warner Bros. (the studio that released both “Minecraft” and “Sinners”) is thinking about a sequel, with President of Development and Production Jesse Erman telling the FT, “The fans want more, so hopefully we’ll be able to figure something out.”