It was 11 years in the making, but A Minecraft Movie finally opened in theaters this weekend. The movie, based on the mega popular video game, stars Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, and Sebastian Eugene Hansen. Black plays “expert crafter” Steve (that block guy dressed in blue) while the others assume the roles of real-world people who find themselves mysteriously transported into the Overworld. Bringing Minecraft to the big screen was a journey, but it looks like it paid off. On its opening weekend, A Minecraft Movie had the biggest opening day of 2025. This is the largest opening box office since last summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

After more than a decade in development, “A Minecraft Movie” has dug deep and struck box office diamonds. Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment‘s long-gestating video game adaptation notched a stellar $58 million across Friday and preview screenings from 4,263 North American venues — blasting past “Captain America: Brave New World” ($40.9 million) to land the biggest opening day figure of 2025 so far. In fact, it’s the largest since the record-breaking “Deadpool & Wolverine” launch back in July 2024.

It’s a huge start that puts “A Minecraft Movie” on pace to jockey far ahead of its initial projections, which had forecast a domestic opening weekend of $70 million to $80 million. A three-day debut in the nine-digits is now on the way; the North American market hasn’t seen one of those since “Moana 2” back in November. Some projections have the blocky adventure film going north of $150 million for its opening weekend, which would rank it among the top 30 biggest domestic debuts of all-time. It also has a great shot at beating “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($146 million) for the biggest three-day opening ever for a video game movie, though there’s the caveat that that animated film technically debuted on a Wednesday and thus had already earned $58 million before moving into its weekend grosses.

Overseas numbers will come tomorrow, but “Minecraft” is a global brand and the film is drawing a big crowd internationally too. It’s even one of the rare recent Hollywood films to put up a signficant debut in China, ranking first in the country’s box office.

With a $150 million production budget, plus marketing and distribution costs, “A Minecraft Movie” has kicked off strong and put itself in position for true blockbuster success. Reviews lean negative, but as with most IP movies, it’s more important for the film to resonate with fans — moviegoer pollster Cinema Score turned in a B+ grade, indicating some good enthusiasm from ticket buyers (though a touch below the glowing A-range of some runaway hit fan-driven films). But even besides that, “A Minecraft Movie” will already rank as the second-highest-grossing domestic release of the year just after one weekend of release — and it won’t have trouble soon catching No. 1, “Captain America 4” ($197 million).

Mojang’s “Minecraft” was first released in 2011 and, after being ported across a litany of platforms, ranks as the best-selling video game of all time, aside from “Tetris.” Warner Bros. first started developing a film based on the lo-fi sandbox property in 2014; Legendary came on as a co-producer in 2019 and got this PG-rated version on track for the studio, adding director Jared Hess in 2022. The film stars Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, Sebastian Eugene Hansen and Jennifer Coolidge.

[From Variety]

By the end of the weekend, A Minecraft Movie had finished with $157 million, making it the best video game adaptation debut in history. And all of this happened despite an unfinished, rough cut of the movie leaking online. Leaks like that can really hurt a movie or album’s chance for success, so it just goes to show the enthusiasm behind the brand, especially after last summer’s terrible Borderlands movie, another video game adaptation. I like Jack Black a lot, so I’m happy that he’s got a win after Borderlands.

So yeah, this news does not surprise me at all! Kids and gamers alike have all been waiting for this movie. It’s like their Barbie. Mr. Rosie took our kids to see it this weekend and they all said that the entire theater was cheering and saying certain lines along with the characters. Mr. Rosie described it as being similar to a kids’ version of a midnight Rocky Horror screening, lol. Although I wanted to go with them, I didn’t because I actually threw Mr. R a surprise birthday party and that movie was my two-hour window to get everything together. All of our friends brought their kids, and when I told people they were at the movies, every kid there, ages five to 16, asked, ”Are they seeing Minecraft?!” Two families had already seen it the evening before. It is definitely a thing and I had to promise to take my kids to a dinner-theater screening on Tuesday evening in exchange for their silence. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

photos credit: James Shaw/Avalon, James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon