By India McCarty
Hollywood can’t figure out why A MINECRAFT MOVIE is breaking records at the box office, but the movie’s director thinks it’s simple — viewers just like Minecraft.
“It’s one of those things,” director Jared Hess told Deadline of the movie’s record-breaking run. “There was an immense audience that was so passionate about the game and for whom Minecraft was such a key part of their childhood adolescence, just something that they loved.”
He continued, “The game itself is so creative, but it’s also ridiculous and really funny and absurd in so many ways. That was so much of the appeal to me in adapting it. It was like, how can you just do a ridiculously fun and funny adventure movie in this world — all of those goofy, dorky things we just really tried to celebrate and were super conscious of while making it?”
Hess explained that he wanted A MINECRAFT MOVIE to be “a ridiculous celebration of this world, creativity, and friendship,” adding that those elements are “key things of the game, too.”
“There [were] also physics and rules of the gameplay we applied to the movie, so anything that we built in the film that you fans could go back and create in the game,” he said. “That was a super-important element, but we also wanted to push it as well and create a new experience beyond just the gameplay.”
Audiences are definitely responding to A MINECRAFT MOVIE. It has already made over $300 million at the global box office, scoring the biggest opening of 2025 so far. It also broke the record for the best opening in history for a video game movie adaptation.
#MinecraftMovie is the #1 movie in the world! 🟩 Join the block party and see it in theaters! Get tickets now. pic.twitter.com/QFeGpb2uRb
— A Minecraft Movie (@AMinecraftMovie) April 6, 2025
“It’s a real hit in the center of the bullseye,” Warner Bros. global distribution chief Jeff Goldstein told Variety. “This is something the industry needed like air.”
Related: Why A MINECRAFT MOVIE Shine at the Box Office
There’s even talk of a sequel — Hess said he is “super excited” about the possibility of another MINECRAFT movie and said it would be “a blast” to return to the movie’s world.
Additionally, A MINECRAFT MOVIE is family-friendly; as a report from Deseret News noted, PG-rated movies made up one third of 2024’s box office earnings. The same year, R-rated movies struggled to make money.
“If the greatest chance of box office success is having a PG-13 rating, or not having an R rating, then that’s where the industry really had to go if that was the primary goal,” Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Axios.
Movieguide® also reported on the success of family-friendly movies in 2024, writing, “Last year, four out of five of the year’s top movies were PG. In comparison, 2023 had only two family-friendly movies in its top five, as reported in Movieguide®’s 2024 Report to the Entertainment Industry.”
“The success of family movies in 2024 displays great statistics, as audiences want to see content they can watch with all of their family members,” Movieguide® continued.
A MINECRAFT MOVIE is just the latest movie to prove to Hollywood that audiences will show up for family-friendly content.
Read Next: Why the World Needs A MINECRAFT MOVIE, According to Jack Black
- Content: +2Share:
- Content: +2