“A Minecraft Movie” isn’t just successful — after three weekends in theaters, the film is estimated to have grossed $344 million domestically and $720 million worldwide. That makes it the most important movie of an admittedly underwhelming yr on the box office (thus far), and the second biggest video game movie of all time.
Coming two years after the huge success of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.36 billion worldwide), and amidst the continued popularity of “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies, it’s probably secure to say Hollywood’s video game adaptation curse has been broken.
In actual fact, one anonymous studio executive told the Financial Times that video games have “replaced comic books as the subsequent frontier of IP to be explored.” And just as superhero movies generally became more faithful to their source material in the course of the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this executive said that the important thing to a successful video game movie is “fan service” — i.e., staying true to “the characters and the milieu of the sport and the eye to detail.”
It also seems noteworthy that the most important 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 essentially 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, however the filmmakers have embraced it, with director Jared Hess telling Entertainment Weekly that it’s “weird whenever you’re having an excessive amount of fun and the cops get called.” And it’s actually turned the act of seeing “A Minecraft Movie” in theaters right into a real event.
The film was actually unseated from the highest of the box office charts this weekend, with a surprise victory for the unique 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 maintain going up.
And yes, it feels like Warner Bros. (the studio that released each “Minecraft” and “Sinners”) is desirous about a sequel, with President of Development and Production Jesse Ehrman telling the FT, “The fans want more, so hopefully we’ll have the option to figure something out.”
