“Minecraft Movie” is more than just a hit. After three theatre weekends, the film is estimated to have sold $344 million domestically and $720 million worldwide. This is clearly the biggest film of the year, which was overwhelmingly at the box office (so far), and the second largest video game film of all time.
Two years after the huge success of the “Super Mario Bros. Film” ($1.36 billion worldwide), and amidst the continued popularity of the “Sonic the Hedgehog” film, it’s probably safe to say that the curse of Hollywood video games has been broken.
In fact, an anonymous studio executive told the Financial Times that video games will “consider comic books as the frontier of the next IP.” And just as superhero movies became more faithful to their source material in the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the executive said that “fanservice” is the key to successful video game films.
It is also worth noting that the biggest success stories from games to movies are kids’ titles like “Minecraft” (adapted from the Mojang Studios Sandbox game released in 2011 by Mojang Studios Sandbox Game) and “Super Mario”.
“Minecraft Movie” benefited from some viral luck after Tiktok’s video urged young fans to scream, jump and throw popcorn at the actor Jack Black to shout the immortal words “Chicken Jockey!”
Apparently, some play owners are vague about trends like #gentleminions, but filmmakers have embraced it, with director Jared Hess telling Entertainment Weekly “It’s so much fun and weird when the cops are called out.” And it certainly changed the act of watching “Minecraft Movie” in theaters into actual events.
The film actually was unmarried from the top of this weekend’s box office collecting charts, and it was a surprising victory over the original horror film “Sinners.” However, “Minecraft” won an estimated $41.3 million domestically over the third weekend, suggesting that these box office revenues will continue to rise.
And yes, it sounds like Warner Bros. (the studio that released both “Minecraft” and “Sinners”) is thinking about a sequel.