While the Super Mario Bros. Movie was incredibly successful, having made $146 million in the domestic market on its theatrical release, A Minecraft Movie has now overtaken it, becoming the highest-grossing box office debut for a game adaptation. According to IGN, A Minecraft Movie made $157 million in its opening weekend.
A Minecraft Movie has also been doing quite well in international market, making an extra $144 million. This puts the combined box office debut for A Minecraft Movie at around $301 million. For context, the cost to produce A Minecraft Movie reportedly came in at around $150 million, not counting its global marketing costs.
While this is by no means confirmation on the matter, the fact that A Minecraft Movie has made so much money in just its opening weekend would indicate that Warner Bros. might have sequels planned.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer would likely support endeavours for a sequel, since back in March, he spoke about wanting more video games to be adapted into movies and TV shows. In an interview, Spencer spoke about how Microsoft had learned from the mistakes it had made with its Halo adaptation, and would like to go ahead with adapting more of its properties for the big and little screen.
“We’re learning and growing through this process, which is giving us more confidence that we should do more,” said Spencer. “We learned from doing Halo. We learned from doing Fallout. So all of these build on themselves. And obviously we’ll have a couple that miss. But what I’d say to the Xbox community that likes this work is, ‘You’re going to see more, because we’re gaining confidence and we’re learning through this.’”
In the same interview, Legendary’s chairman of worldwide production, Mary Parent, spoke about why A Minecraft Movie has that title, rather than just Minecraft like the game it is based on. According to Parent, the movie’s title was chosen because the Minecraft games don’t have a singular story. Rather, stories in Minecraft are different depending on players, owing to the game’s sandbox nature.
“We’re calling it ‘A Minecraft Movie’ because we’re respecting the fact that there’s no one story that drives the game,” said Parent.
The last major adaptation of a Microsoft property was the Paramount+ Halo series. The show was ultimately cancelled after two seasons, owing to the heavy criticism it faced.
Other video game adaptations, however, have been doing quite well. Sega’s and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog movies, for instance, have made more than $1 billion at the global box office with three movies having been released.
When it comes to TV, shows like Amazon Prime’s Fallout, as well as HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us have both been well-received both in terms of critics as well as in terms of getting viewers. Fallout 76 creative director Jon Rush also spoke about the Fallout show bringing in a new audience to the game, as well as older titles in the franchise.
The Last of Us will be premiering its second season on April 13.
