Success of ‘Minecraft' shows the future of movies is games

Japan Times

20-05-2025

It's time for Superman to hang up his cape and the Avengers to disassemble. Hollywood's new hero is here and his name is Steve.
You might not instantly recognize Steve, the player avatar of Minecraft, Microsoft Corp.'s sandbox playground video game; the character is something of a blank slate for the user to project themselves onto. But especially if you have kids, you'll likely have seen Steve played by Jack Black in "A Minecraft Movie," the surprise box-office hit of the year.
The big-screen feature from Warner Bros. Discovery has outearned every other U.S. movie so far in 2025, vastly outperforming expectations and taking in twice the box-office revenue of its closest competitor, February's" Captain America: Brave New World." It's a comparison that might have legs. Superhero films have been the staple of Hollywood blockbusters for 15 years, but audience interest is flagging — and the success of "Minecraft" suggests video games can be the next big-screen big thing.
Given the expense of a blockbuster movie, Hollywood studios love familiar bets and products with a track record. In the past, that meant bankable action stars like Schwarzenegger and Stallone or best-selling books like "Harry Potter" or "The Da Vinci Code." And, of course, executives love the safety of a trend, from the post-"Star Wars" obsession with sci-fi to the brief fascination with young-adult dystopias of "Hunger Games" rip-offs.
That's why they'll be closely watching the viral "chicken jockey'moment of "A Minecraft Movie" that had kids throwing popcorn at the screen when Jack Black referenced an obscure piece of the game's lore. It's a testament to how games have become not just part of the zeitgeist, but perhaps one of the only shared experiences of a generation whose media diet is impossibly fractured.
That's one thing drawing studios as they struggle to get younger people into theater seats. Another is the nature of the medium: Today's game universes must be incredibly intricate and detailed, resulting in properties that are rich in lore and, if a first take is successful, adaptable content.
But the secret of the recent wave of success of films based on video games, from 2023's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" to the surprise horror hit "Five Nights at Freddy's," is that Hollywood has finally learned the deceptively simple secret of how to adapt these properties.
It's one that can be explained in a single image: the freakish sight from deep in the uncanny valley of the original 2019 movie design of "Sonic the Hedgehog." In place of the cartoon character familiar to '90s-era gamers, the film planned a more "realistic' Sonic, complete with terrifying human-like teeth. Sonic's online fans (and there are many of them) revolted, demanding the studio make a change.
Paramount Pictures relented, delayed the debut for months and spending a reported $5 million to give the nearly finished film a more recognizable Sonic design. It was money well-spent: When released in 2020, "Sonic the Hedgehog" wasn't just a success; it has since spawned a $1 billion franchise, with each sequel outgrossing its predecessor. A fourth movie is in the works, with Sega Sammy Holdings' licensing revenue nearly tripling in the past four years and its shares having doubled since the first entry hit theaters.
This solution — give fans what they want and expect — seems remarkably simple. But one staple of game adaptations for years, from 1993's Bob Hoskins-helmed "Super Mario Bros." onward, was unnecessary tweaking of often-beloved source material, as executives unfamiliar with the medium made radical changes to fix what they saw as flaws.
Instead, today's adaptations lean into what fans hope for — and they turn up. That's why more than 40 movies based on game franchises are in the works, according to some counts — from well-known properties like Zelda to newer franchises such as Sony Group's Ghost of Tsushima, helmed by John Wick director Chad Stahelski. Even smaller indie titles are getting a look, with a film in the works adapting France's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one of this year's most surprising hits, and actress Sydney Sweeney reportedly will star in "Split Fiction," developed by a small team in Sweden.
Of course, many of these future adaptations are hardly Minecraft, which has hundreds of millions of active players every month. Few franchises will have such a level of familiarity and pent-up demand. And the time may come that we're sitting around yawning about yet another new video-game movie, just as we do now with superheroes, as studios plunder their back catalogs for big-screen takes on Bubsy the Bobcat or Vexx (yes, those are both real games).
But for now, cinephiles can look forward to fewer capes — and more Sonics, Marios and Steves.
Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan and the Koreas.