When in a movie theater a baby zombie rides a chicken and the entire room, all teenagers, bursts into screams, throwing popcorn and TikTok is flooded with videos corroborating the chaos in the roomssomething has happened that has gone under the radar of industry forecasts. ‘A Minecraft movie‘ was not exactly the critics’ favorite of 2025, but it undoubtedly had one of the best box offices of the year. This weekend you can see why it happened in Netflix.
In just two weeks, the film surpassed $550 million in worldwide receipts. It ended up close to a billion. A true phenomenon that revitalized the industry’s interest in video games, already highlighted by the success of ‘Super Mario Bros. The Movie’ in 2023 with its more than $1.36 billion at the box office. With Sonic, Mario and ‘Mortal Kombat’ having several sequels and a second part of ‘A Minecraft Movie’ scheduled for 2027, it remains to be seen if we are facing a momentary impact or a true trend.
The movie does a good job in transforming the almost abstract original game into a story with minimal coherence: Steve (Jack Black) is a doorknob salesman with the dream of working in a mine and discovers a portal that transports him to the Overworld, the cubic world of Minecraft, where he is captured by Malgosha, a pig sorceress who seeks to dominate that world. Some time later he will join four strangers from the real world (including Jason Momoa) to find his way back home.
The film’s impact not only translates into box office success, but also into a revitalization of the brand: by April 2025, ‘Minecraft’ had sold more than 350 million copies worldwide, consolidating its position as the most popular video game of all time. Following the film’s release, console and mobile sales of the original game grew by 35% and daily active users on console increased by 41%. A true phenomenon that demonstrates, once again, that while adults point to the moon with a solemn gesture, young people do, essentially, whatever they want.
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