With an explosion in presales and interest, Warner Bros./Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie” is suddenly looking like a box office drought buster. The film earned $10.5 million in Thursday previews, setting a new record for video game adaptations and topping the $10.3 million preview total of “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”
That Blumhouse film went on to an $80 million domestic opening weekend in October 2023 driven by strong turnout from Gen Z fans of the indie horror game series. And while that film was a PG-13 horror movie, “Minecraft” is a PG family film released in the heart of the spring break period.
Earlier this week, projections for “Minecraft” were set at $70 million with a strong upside for $80 million-plus. In the past 48 hours, those projections have rapidly risen amid late presales and strong overseas opening day totals, and now the film is expected to earn a $100 million-plus domestic start.
Theaters desperately need such a start to make up for a March that was well below average, with monthly totals failing to even eclipse $400 million. The last time outside of the pandemic that March totals fell that low was the unadjusted $313 million grossed in 1995.
Critics are mixed on “Minecraft,” giving the film a Rotten Tomatoes score of 48%. But as “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” showed, what really matters is whether families and gamers are pleased enough to keep turning out for the film in the weeks ahead. So far, there’s positive signs on that front with an 83% audience RT score.
