‘A Minecraft Movie’ Ends Box Office Drought in Stunning Fashion With $58 Million Opening Day
How’s this for some shocking good news? Warner Bros./Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie” has exploded past even the most optimistic of expectations and is now projected by industry estimates to earn a $156 million domestic opening weekend from 4,263 locations.
This is the sort of opening that can completely change the trajectory of the theatrical market, especially after a March in which overall domestic totals crashed below $400 million. If “Minecraft” had been released in March, this result would stand as the third highest opening ever in that month behind only the 2017 “Beauty and the Beast” remake and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
And for Warner Bros., this result makes “Minecraft” only the sixth movie in studio history to clear $150 million. Chalk it up as another win in the studio’s fruitful partnership with Legendary Pictures, which also produces “Godzilla x Kong” and the “Dune” films.
Prior to release, tracking had “Minecraft” making $70 million-plus in its opening, and in the final days before release, those projections rose to $100 million-plus. But no tracker or exhibitor expected this “Super Mario Bros. Movie”-level turnout from families and gamers, showing just how much cultural cache the sandbox survival game and digital creative playground has built since it was first released in 2009.
The future for this film is also just as unpredictable, as the film earned a B+ on CinemaScore along with a 65% “definite recommend” rating on PostTrak and an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. A B+ for a family film is usually a warning sign, and the PostTrak and RT scores are positive but lower than what “Mario” received two years ago.
However, “Minecraft” still has two weeks of school break play until Easter Sunday, and its only family film competition between now and Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” remake in late May is Angel Studios’ Christian animated film “The King of Kings.” It’s difficult to say at this point whether there are enough “Minecraft” fans and kids willing to drag their parents out to get this film to the levels reached by “Super Mario Bros.” or if this will be a more frontloaded film like “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”
But even in the latter scenario, the film should still provide theaters with the pre-summer tentpole support it has been desperately needing for weeks. If you want a sense of how much this changes things for the box office, overall weekend totals are currently estimated at $197 million, making this the best weekend of 2025 so far and only the second of the year to top $100 million alongside Valentine’s/Presidents Day weekend when “Captain America: Brave New World” was released.
By the end of Q1 this past Monday, the 2025 domestic box office was down 12.5% from the previous year. If this result for “Minecraft” holds, the deficit will drop down to around 6%. Given the volume of films set in the next couple of weeks, including “Sinners,” “Drop,” and “The Accountant 2,” expect that deficit to keep dropping.
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