Can ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Reboot Hollywood’s Tough Year?

Maybe Warner Bros. Discovery can get out of survival mode for a little bit. After smashing all sorts of records in the world of video games, Minecraft is now smashing all sorts of records in the world of movies.

In its debut this weekend, A Minecraft Movie lit the box office on fire. It’s a much-needed win for the battered WBD — as well as Hollywood writ large.

Survive Till ’25

That A Minecraft Movie is performing well should be no surprise. The video game, which was officially released in 2011 (though it gained popularity in pre-release ‘beta’ form for years prior), is the best-selling video game of all time, boasting some 350 million copies across just about every video game platform available in the past decade and a half — from the iPhone to the PlayStation 5. Now the franchise, which debuted to $163 million at the domestic box office and $301 million worldwide, also holds the titles of the highest-ever domestic box office debut for a video game adaptation (besting Super Mario’s $146 million debut in 2023), as well as the best debut of the year so far.

Its strong performance is welcome news to the entire industry. For years now, battling the pandemic, the historic dual-talent strikes of 2023, a great streaming corrective, and just about every other headwind imaginable, Hollywood has been uttering one mantra over and over: “Survive til 2025.” The bad news: 2025 has yet to be the bountiful year executives were hoping to survive til. The good news: The conditions for a good box office year may very well be materializing. Unfortunately, that’s bad news for just about everyone other than Hollywood executives:

• Box office revenue was down 11% year-over-year through the first quarter of 2025, according to Comscore, fueled by a 50% dip in March alone. In fact, the first quarter has been a “historically slow movie-going season,” Fandango director of movie analytics Shawn Robbins recently told CNN.
• The upshot: Bad macroeconomic conditions tend to be good for the box office, as audiences seek escape from reality. In fact, box office totals have actually increased in six of the last eight recessions, according to a 2022 analysis done by Variety (JPMorgan recently pegged odds of a recession this year at 60%).

Job Insecurity: The success of Minecraft gives WBD a major victory and a potential new reliable blockbuster franchise when it needs it most. Its film studio’s two biggest releases so far this year — the sci-fi satire Mickey 17 and mafia epic The Alto Knights — both bombed at the box office, and Bloomberg reported last week that CEO David Zaslav has started meeting with candidates to possibly replace studio heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Never mind that Zaslav reportedly forced his studio heads to greenlight the latter film.