By Janet H. Cho

A Minecraft Movie, the live-action movie based on the best-selling videogame of all time, clobbered the domestic box office this weekend, racking up $157 million in ticket sales to become the biggest domestic opening this year.

For Warner Bros. Discovery, it was the largest opening weekend since Barbie in July 2023.

Not only did Minecraft sell a massive average of $36,829 across 4,263 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, the not-especially-serious story sold another $144 million of tickets internationally for a "mined-blowing" $301 million global opening weekend, said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

The film, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Universal Pictures, dethroned Walt Disney's Captain America: Brave New World as the biggest domestic opening of 2025.

Minecraft surpassed Universal's 2023 hit The Super Mario Bros. Movie as the largest videogame adaptation and is the largest global IMAX hit since Disney's Deadpool & Wolverine in July.

As the biggest contributor to this weekend's estimated $196 million box office, Minecraft helped push the domestic sales total to $1.67 billion this year -- only 5.3% less than Hollywood had sold by this time last year, Dergarbedian said.

Dergarabedian attributed its success to a "well-orchestrated marketing and distribution strategy that played to the film's strengths on every level," from a PG rating that appealed to families and kids to its partnerships with big-name brands such as McDonald's limited-time "Minecraft Movie Meals" and Mondelez International's "Oreo x A Minecraft Movie" promotions.

Starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Eugene Hansen, and Jennifer Coolidge, A Minecraft Movie portrays four misfits struggling with ordinary problems who are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into a pixelated Overworld, a bizarre, cubic wonderland powered by imagination. Black performs "I Feel Alive, "Steve's Lava Chicken," and "Ode to Denis" on the soundtrack, as well as a "Birthday Rap" with Momoa.

The other films that opened this weekend included Fathom's The Chosen: Last Supper Part 2, which sold $7 million, and Neon's Hell of a Summer, which sold $1.8 million. Amazon/MGM Studios' A Working Man sold $7.3 million in its second weekend, for a domestic total of $27.8 million cumulatively.

Disney's Snow White whistled its way to a cumulative $77.5 million in sales domestically and $90.9 million internationally, for a $168.4 million global total through Sunday in its third weekend, according to BoxOfficeMojo.

And Disney's Captain America, which opened on Feb. 14 but is still playing in theaters, has now raked in $199.1 million domestically, plus $212.2 million internationally, for $411.4 million in global sales to date.

Write to Janet H. Cho at janet.cho@dowjones.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 06, 2025 17:03 ET (21:03 GMT)

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