Can A Minecraft Movie Be The Next Mario At The Box Office?

It's been a rough start to 2025 at the box office. As of this writing, domestic ticket sales are down around seven percent compared to this time last year. Put simply, we need a hit, and we need it badly. So, can "A Minecraft Movie," the long-awaited cinematic adaptation of the eponymous video game of the same name, be that hit? It certainly has the makings of a huge success, but that doesn't guarantee anything, particularly in the pandemic era. The bigger question is, can this break through the noise and galvanize the massive "Minecraft" fanbase in a meaningful way?

"A Minecraft Movie" is currently eyeing a three-day domestic debut in the $55 to $68 million range, per Box Office Theory. That would be one of the biggest domestic openings of the year thus far, trailing only "Captain America: Brave New World" ($88 million). However, Marvel's latest fizzled quickly and has barely topped $400 million globally to date. What Warner Bros. — and the industry at large — is hoping for here is something closer to what "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" did in 2023. That is, admittedly, a tall order, but is it all that outlandish?

Universal's animated "Mario" movie opened to an astonishing $146 million, which far exceeded already optimistic tracking at the time. It eventually pulled in more than $1.3 billion globally, becoming by far the highest-grossing video game movie ever. Of course, Nintendo's beloved plumber and his friends have been a pop culture staple for decades.

"Minecraft," by comparison, hasn't been around for nearly as long, although it does have a truly enormous fanbase — one that's young, it's worth noting. Recall that families helped drive "Mario" to record numbers for weeks on end. It also helped that "Mario" was a global brand, as about 58% of the film's money ultimately came from overseas. "Minecraft" similarly has a huge footprint all over the world, as it's the best selling video game of all time.

"A Minecraft Movie," directed by Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite"), follows four misfits — Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers), and Dawn (Danielle Brooks) — as they're suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. Joining Momoa ("Aquaman"), Brooks ("The Color Purple"), Myers ("Wednesday"), and Hansen ("Just Mercy") in the all-star cast is Bower himself from "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," Jack Black as the expert crafter Steve.

Critics might not even be that vital to the equation here. Remember that reviews were mixed on "Mario," yet audiences ate it up. In this case, it's all about doing right by fans, much in the way that the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movies have. The trailers for "A Minecraft Movie" are jam-packed with Easter eggs, which is all good and well, but can this be more than an Easter egg hunt? Will fans rally around what Hess has put on screen? That's the key here. If Hess and his crew nailed it, this movie could easily exceed current tracking. If fans aren't having it? Things could get ugly, particularly for Warner Bros. as the movie is said to carry a budget in the $150 million range.

The good news is that this film will have almost nothing by way of competition. By next weekend, "Snow White" should have fizzled out. The only other competition will be holdovers like Blumhouse's new horror offering "The Woman in the Yard" and MGM's action flick "A Working Man." Those are most certainly going for a different crowd. The coast is clear and the right pieces are on the board. Optimism in place, this could be the hit we've been waiting for.

"A Minecraft Movie" reaches theaters on April 4, 2025.