The much-anticipated movie adaptation of the hit video game Minecraft has finally been released to overwhelming financial success. A Minecraft Movie, directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite fame, has quickly become one of the highest-grossing video game film adaptations of all time and has been the current reigning box office champion for three weeks straight.
For those not familiar, Minecraft it’s an open-world sandbox game set in a cubic world where players can build blocky creations and survive monster attacks. First released in 2011, it quickly became one of the most popular video games of all time. For nearly a decade, Minecraft enjoyed an almost universal popularity that not many other video games have experienced, in part due to the degree of freedom it gave players and its prevalence with YouTubers.
Like most video game film adaptations, A Minecraft Movie deviates from the formula of the original game to tell its own story. It follows twins Natalie and Henry (Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen), who, alongside washed-up video game store owner Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), are transported to the Overworld, the game’s main dimension. There, they team up with ex-door salesman and certified whackjob Steve (played by an always fantastic Jack Black) to stop the evil machinations of the Piglins, pig people who want to snuff out all creativity.
Already in its second month, the movie has been a runaway success for Warner and Universal. Grossing over $900 million worldwide, it beat the week-by-week profit of the previous box office record holder, 2023’s Barbie, by a narrow margin, placing it on track to gross well over a billion dollars by the end of its run. To put this into context, it’s now the tenth-highest grossing film of all time when looking at week four of a run. This incredible momentum has stood in stark contrast to its overall critical reception by reviewers, who have panned its poor writing and pacing.
Much of this division can be attributed to its overnight popularity online. Many clips from the film, predominantly of Black’s over-the-top performance, went viral online, leading many to see the movie purely for the memes. This trend is in line with other past movies such as Minions: Rise of Gru, which, while generally considered not good, wildly overperformed at the box office due to internet hype.
However, the film has not been without its share of controversy. A prominent example is the “Chicken Jockey” trend, which has seen viewers erupt into cheering and throwing popcorn at the screen during a specific scene where Black shouts the phrase “chicken jockey”, leading to multiple instances of police being called to theaters. The line had been included in an early trailer, leading it to become a meme online before the movie’s release.
In response, many theaters have now either banned unattended minors from seeing the movie or created dedicated screenings that theatergoers can attend. Many theater employees have taken to social media to share pictures of popcorn-littered and trashed theaters and to ask viewers to restrain their reactions. Director Hess also publicly commented on the trend, saying that “it’s weird when you’re having too much fun and the cops get called. It’s funny because I think it’s just literally cheering and throwing popcorn, which is so funny to me that cops are getting called for popcorn, but man, I’m just glad people are making memories with their friends and families.”
Despite, or depending on how you look at it, because of this, the movie is still poised to continue making bank for the foreseeable future, but it’s beginning to run into stiff competition. Ryan Coogler’s supernatural 1930s gangster movie Sinners is already slated to overtake A Minecraft Movie at the number one spot, which might put a damper on its performance. Despite that, it’s safe to say that it’ll still be bringing in theatergoers and bringing in money for a little while longer.
