A Minecraft Movie is off to a pretty amazing start, with $58 million coming in on the first day in the U.S. and $110 million globally.
Minecraft brought in $58 million on Friday in the U.S., and another $52 million overseas for a total opening day of $110 million, according to Box Office Mojo. The projections are for further growth and it could well be the biggest opening of the year.
That’s important for Microsoft, which hasn’t had luck with some of its game-related Hollywood efforts like the Paramount+ series for Halo.
Now Microsoft gets to partake in some of the success that has sprouted in movies and TV for rivals like Nintendo (The Super Mario Bros. Movie generated $1.3 billion in 2023), Sega (which has had three successes with Sonic the Hedgehog) and Sony, which has had a huge success with The Last of Us on HBO.
Mojang founder Marcus “Notch” Persson created Minecraft and sold it to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. The game has continued to grow its audience under Microsoft, with 204 million monthly active users in December.
The Warner Bros. film was directed by Jared Hess and it stars Jason Momoa, Jack Black and others. The reviews for The Minecraft Movie were pretty weak, but that hasn’t stopped the Minecraft generation from turning out for the movie.
