Summary
- Minecraft Movie's unexpected success stems from fan disruption, memes, and online influence.
- The film's financial success led to unique screenings accommodating disruptive Minecraft fans.
- The impact of memes on cinema is evident in previous film releases shaping movie culture.
A Minecraft Movie is quickly becoming one of the most popular and widely talked-about films of 2025, thanks in large part to its fans. They've made a riotous noise in theaters across the US and internationally, sparking outrage, upset, and a wider debate around how cinema is changing. Now, theaters are starting to realize an opportunity staring them right in the face.
Jack Black's now instantly recognizable performance in A Minecraft Movie has taken the world by storm. In the lead up to the film, many doubted that it would be able to deliver for long-time Minecraft fans and general audiences. Critics gifted the production a debut rating of 53%, which has since dropped to 48% at present. But no one could have predicted how it would skyrocket to its place as a new cultural phenomenon. It has grossed $816 million worldwide, and was the first film of 2025 to surpass $300 million at the box office. But its true success lies in its unprecedented and unplanned utilization of internet meme culture.
Minecraft Player Shares Simple Happy Ghast Launcher Design
One Minecraft player shares an easy-to-build launcher design that allows players to gain altitude quickly when traveling with their happy ghasts.
Fans have been going wild in theaters, throwing popcorn, lobbing drinks at families, setting off fireworks, paint bombs, and holding actual live chickens aloft to the iconic Chicken Jockey scene in the film. The baffling audience reaction has been pushed far beyond the boundaries of multiple applause breaks. All of this stemmed from a variety of online accounts and social media platforms taking Jack Black's many one-liners, such as "Flint and steel!" or "I... Am Steve", as well as his signature abrupt musical interludes, and turning them into memeable content. Which led to fans going to the theater just to react to these moments and incite disruptive behavior. Initially, theaters were extremely upset. Many have ejected moviegoers without refunds, given multiple verbal warnings, and Jack Black has even visited a theater to tell them to remain calm. It has likely been a miserable experience for theater staff, unaware of and unprepared for the initial chaos.
However, that doesn't mean that theaters and Warner Bros. Pictures are completely unaware of the financial opportunity here. Cineworld Cinemas in the UK started to hold special "Chicken Jockey" screenings in order to provide a separate space where Minecraft fans could disrupt without penalization. Now, Fandango is creating a sing-a-long and meme-along event in A Minecraft Movie: Block Party Edition, which is releasing on May 2nd in North America and in specific theaters worldwide. Fans turning up are being actively encouraged to join in and "Warm up your vocal chords". There have certainly been sing-a-long screenings of films before, as recently as Wicked in 2024, but a meme-a-long edition is a brand-new term that film fanatics are going to have to adjust to.
Memes have steadily been influencing the way in which movies are released and watched. Most notably, "Barbenheimer" was a cultural event that began online when fans excited about Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer realized they were releasing on the same day in cinemas: July 21, 2023. This quickly became a meme online, with posters being created showing the two films combined as a singular event. Moviegoers started cosplaying for both movies at the cinema, watching the films back to back on release with a quick costume change in between. Oppenheimer would likely have swept the Oscars regardless, and Gerwig's Barbie would've made a splash, but film historians will never truly know if both films would've been such commercial hits without this online fervor. It definitely made a massive contribution to both productions' financial success.
Morbius also had a brush with meme culture. The film was a massive flop on its initial release, but certain scenes with Matt Smith and Jared Leto in the movie were heavily satirized online, which led Sony to re-release it again, expecting fans memeing the production to return in droves. They failed to show up and the film tragically flopped again. So far, no film has had the level of symbiosis between meme and cinema that A Minecraft Movie has enjoyed. It's young, excitable, and very much online audience is helping to further fan the flames of meme culture's importance in Hollywood. In many ways, it's quite literally changing the face of cinema, orienting it more towards spectacle. Now, studio executives will be eyeing up the best way to create a new cultural meme event to grab audiences' attention.
But much like how Avengers: Endgame was a worldwide event, Hollywood has sort of always operated on this basis, it's just shifting towards memes being more relevant in that equation. All the film releases in early 2025 that were original, novel ideas flopped incredibly hard or barely broke even, with the exception of Sinners. Audiences are going to get what they pay for going forward, and A Mincraft Movie is leading the way into the online meme scene.
- Release Date
- April 4, 2025
- Runtime
- 101 minutes
- Director
- Jared Hess
- Writers
- Chris Galletta, Gavin James, Chris Bowman, Neil Widener, Hubbel Palmer
- Producers
- Jason Momoa, Jill Messick, Mary Parent, Roy Lee, Cale Boyter, Jon Berg, Vu Bui
Cast
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Jason MomoaGarrett -
Jack BlackSteve
