Minecraft movie’s $211m opening in North America is best of 2025 so far

LOS ANGELES – A Minecraft Movie, a Warner Bros Discovery film based on the namesake video game, opened at No. 1 in American and Canadian cinemas over the weekend, marking the biggest debut for a film in 2025. 

The picture, co-produced by Legendary Entertainment, delivered weekend sales of US$157 million (S$211 million), Warner Bros said in a statement on April 6, storming past industry tracker Boxoffice Pro’s forecast of US$85 million to US$100 million. The film took in an additional US$144 million in cinemas internationally.

Estimates for the movie soared last week based on advanced ticket-buying data. The live-action comedy and fantasy picture stars American actors Jack Black and Jason Momoa as misfits pulled into a cubic world based on the game. 

The opening is good news for North American cinemas, which had seen ticket sales slide 11 per cent before the start of the weekend.

It is also a welcome hit for Warner Bros’ film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, who have come under scrutiny over profligate spending on titles with uncertain commercial prospects. A Minecraft Movie was developed by their predecessor Toby Emmerich and led by Warner Bros production chief Jesse Ehrman, as well as the creative team at Legendary.

“When we got to the studio, it was kind of languishing in second gear, and we recognised that it should be fast-tracked and something that could be a big hit,” Mr De Luca said in a joint interview with Ms Abdy on April 6.

Ms Abdy said she had received TikTok clips of children and parents dancing to the movie’s scenes in cinemas. The film “is really joyful, and in a world rife with anxiety, it is something you can share with people of all ages,” Mr De Luca said.

Legendary, which has a distribution deal with Warner Bros, also produced Dune: Part Two (2024) and Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (2024), which became the highest-grossing Warner Bros releases of 2024 with a combined US$1.29 billion worldwide. 

“When Toby and Jesse at Warner Bros sent this to Legendary in 2019, we knew this was huge intellectual property that needed to be explained and made accessible,” Legendary chief executive Joshua Grode said in a statement.

Mr Ehrman and Legendary’s head of production Mary Parent developed a movie that honours the fans while still being accessible to the general audience, Mr Grode said.

Although A Minecraft Movie received only a 49 per cent critics’ score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, fans of the top-selling game propelled ticket sales.

The opening beat Captain America: Brave New World (2025) from Walt Disney’s Marvel Studios to become the year’s highest-grossing debut. It continues a string of recent success for films based on video games, including The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023) and Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024).

The next release from Warner Bros is the period vampire picture Sinners from Ryan Coogler, director of Creed (2015) and Black Panther (2018).

The film, which opens in Singapore cinemas on April 17, is one of the key bets on original titles associated with Mr De Luca and Ms Abdy, alongside American actress-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! and American film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. Bloomberg