‘A Minecraft Movie’ Opens With Double Its Reported Budget at the Worldwide BO!!

Building upon its spectacular performance at the domestic box office, A Minecraft Movie set records in its debut weekend globally. It delivered the biggest domestic opening for a video game adaptation, beating The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s record from a couple of years ago, and grossed around twice its reported production budget in its global debut. Starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, A Minecraft Movie is directed by Jared Hess, who remains best known for co-directing the cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. This is the biggest project that he has worked on, although both Black and Momoa have experience with mega-budget blockbusters.

With $157 million domestically and another $144 million from overseas markets, A Minecraft Movie earned a cumulative $301 million in its global box office debut, shattering expectations and setting the stage for what could be W.B.’s first billion-dollar hit since Barbie in 2023, and definitely the studio’s biggest hit since Dune: Part Two last year. W.B. has had a difficult run in recent months, with Joker: Folie à Deux emerging as a box office bomb of historic proportions in 2024. Earlier this year, the films Mickey 17 and The Alto Knights also under-performed commercially, amid rumors of a change in studio leadership.

What A Minecraft Movie has going in its favor is the stupendous audience response. Videos of fans having a wild time in theaters are being widely shared on social media, but this was expected. The film holds an 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, in addition to the solid B+ CinemaScore that it earned from opening day audiences. That being said, A Minecraft Movie is currently sitting at a “rotten” 49% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review, Collider’s Nate Richard described the film as “surprisingly tolerable,” and wrote that he’d probably have enjoyed it more if he was seven years old.

Are Video Game Movies Having a Moment?

Produced on a reported budget of $150 million, A Minecraft Movie continues pushing video game adaptations in the right direction. The surrounding narrative began to change with films such as Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, Rampage, Super Mario Bros. and Uncharted, all of which emerged as popular hits. Black has experienced blockbuster success previously with four Kung Fu Panda movies and two Jumanji blockbusters, while Momoa has already delivered a billion-dollar hit for W.B. with Aquaman. You can watch A Minecraft Movie in theaters