“A Minecraft Movie,” based on the hit video game, opened in theaters this weekend and became a surprise smash, eclipsing the box office openings of hits like “Barbie”—but disruptive behavior by theatergoers has alarmed some cinemas, prompting them to put out warnings against causing a disturbance.
Key Facts
- “A Minecraft Movie” easily nabbed the best domestic opening weekend of the year so far with $163 million, leading theaters nationwide to their highest-grossing weekend in five months after a dismal start to the year.
- The film’s opening weekend total is the best for a film since “Deadpool & Wolverine” last summer, and it surpassed the opening grosses of box office smashes “Barbie” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” edging out the latter to earn the best opening weekend for a video game film adaptation.
- “A Minecraft Movie” stunned by outperforming opening weekend projections: Two days before opening, Deadline projected it would gross $65 million, while Variety projected it would earn $70 million (“Who the hell saw this coming?” Deadline wrote after reporting the film’s huge $163 million opening).
- Deadline reported Warner Bros. Pictures, the film’s production and distribution company, helped the film become a blockbuster by energizing social media and collaborating with influencers—but the film’s virality has also alarmed theaters, as many viral videos on TikTok have depicted disruptive behavior during the movie.
- The movie also boasts a star-studded cast led by Jack Black and Jason Momoa, with co-stars including Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Coolidge and Emma Myers.
How have “a Minecraft Movie” audiences disrupted the film?
Many videos on TikTok show audiences standing up and erupting into shouts during one scene, in which Black and Momoa’s characters are in a boxing ring. During the scene, a zombie character mounts a chicken, prompting Black’s character to say: “Chicken jockey.” Disruptive audiences typically yell the “chicken jockey” line in sync with Black’s character, and videos depicting the raucous audience reactions have garnered millions of likes on TikTok. In one video liked 2 million times, audiences yelled Black’s line while erupting into applause. In another video liked 3 million times, some audience members jumped out of their chairs during the scene. One video, with 2 million likes, depicts theatergoers throwing buckets full of popcorn during the scene, and later in the video, police are seen escorting several attendees out of the theater. Some videos have depicted other bizarre behavior during the film. In one TikTok with nearly 500,000 likes, a theatergoer stood up in front of the screen before the movie started, announcing to theatergoers: “This movie is going to change our lives,” to cheers from the audience.
How have theatres responded to “a Minecraft Movie” disturbances?
Some theaters have warned attendees against disrupting “A Minecraft Movie” screenings. One movie theater in Washington Township, New Jersey, banned unaccompanied minors from watching the movie without adult supervision, the theater said in a Facebook post. The theater cited a group of unsupervised boys engaging in “completely unacceptable behavior, including vandalism.” A Cineworld theater in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, posted a sign inside the theater warning audiences they will be removed without a refund if they disturb “Minecraft” screenings. The Cineworld chain told the BBC in a statement it has created “special Chicken Jockey 4DX screenings” for fans who want to be loud during the film.
Big Number
$313 million. That’s how much “A Minecraft Movie” made in theaters worldwide in its first three days, according to Box Office Mojo.
Chief Critics
The “Minecraft” film has a critics score of 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating mostly negative reviews, though the audience score is much higher at 88%. The Hollywood Reporter critic Lovia Gyarkye said the movie “fails to spark the imagination, betraying a core tenet of the game on which it’s based.” San Francisco Chronicle critic Zaki Hasan criticized it as the latest example of Hollywood “shoving a beloved property into the factory mold,” relying on name recognition instead of quality. In a more positive review, Los Angeles Times critic Amy Nicholson called it “big dumb fun” and hopes it “hooks kids on the habit of going to the movies.” Films based on video games have historically struggled to please critics, who say the large volume of story and content in a game is difficult to translate to a two-hour film.
Key Background
“Minecraft” has sold more than 300 million copies since its launch in 2011, according to developer Mojang Studios, and it is considered the best-selling video game of all time, —though some publications, like GameSpot, consider Tetris to be the best-selling game, while others have disputed this because Tetris is a series instead of a single game. Minecraft is a single or multi-player open-world game in which users can find building materials and tools to construct buildings and other structures. The game can be played in creative mode, in which players can build freely, or in survival mode, in which players must find food and resources to survive while fending off monsters. Microsoft purchased Mojang Studios, including Minecraft and its intellectual property, in 2014, in a deal that made its creator, Swedish video game developer Markus Persson, a billionaire. Persson is worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes estimates.
This article was originally published on forbes.com.
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