r/boxoffice • u/jdogamerica • 2d ago
✍️ Original Analysis 'A Minecraft Movie' Looks To Unearth A $100M+ Opening - Ticket Sales Tracking (3/31-4/3)
Thanks to a slow March, the month's last batch of releases came to make some noise.
Leading the pack, A Working Man reunited Jason Statham and David Ayer just a year after The Beekeeper. Luckily, the duo showed they still have the juice with an opening just on par with last year's sleeper hit, but fell right in line with my $5.63M Th+Fri prediction. Whether the film hopefully legs out, Amazon/MGM should still be satisfied on their mid-sized $40M flick.
Following up Statham, horror tried luring in some more audience members. With an extremely mute marketing campaign, The Woman in the Yard proved Blumhouse still has some juice as it surpassed almost every tracking, except mine as its actuals were also nearly identical to my $3.71M Th+Fri guesstimate. Against its thankfully low $12M budget, per Blumhouse norm, the latest horror should do fine, even if the negative buzz makes this drop like a rock. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Death of a Unicorn, whose actuals came in slightly below my $2.47M Th+Fri expectations. With a $15M price tag, the A24 horror comedy looks to be another miss for the indie studio.
After a slew of disappointing box office openings, it looks like the tide is finally starting to change. For decades, the video game adaptation seemed to be a movie curse, with very doing financially well or being positively received. All that has changed in the 2020s with the recent Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, Uncharted, Five Nights at Freddy's, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie all being among the highest-grossing video game adaptations of all time. Even if they are all not critically-acclaimed is irrelevant as long as the audiences are happy. Now, Warner Brothers is jumping back into the video game world with A Minecraft Movie.
Based on the online juggernaut of the 2010s, A Minecraft Movie is finally hitting the big screen after years of development hell. With a A-List stars and a cult classic comedy director, WB is hoping Minecraft not only rides the wave of successful video game adaptation hits, but is the kickstarter to a new franchise. Small issue, online buzz ha been anything but positive since the first teaser. While this is usually a death sentence, the persistent marketing has potentially turned A Minecraft Movie into more of a "meme movie" with audiences wanting to see the film as part of the joke. At this rate, WB will take anything, as long as it follows in the steps as Five Nights at Freddy's.
After weeks of quiet previews, it is refreshing to see Thursday numbers like this, especially outside of summer. Even with strong initial sales, A Minecraft Movie has been able to keep up a healthy pace throughout the week at both locations, heading towards $6.78M compared to Freddy's.
For a younger-skewing audience, this start is more than encouraging. With a healthy amount of showtimes, the theater capacities are holding well, even it lacks behind Freddy's due to more showtimes. Even if A Minecraft Movie gets hit with negative buzz, it won't be until after the weekend. So buckle in because it's about to be one hell of a weekend.
If Thursday was big, Friday is looking to be a behemoth. With higher than average sales at these locations, it is near a miracle that A Minecraft Movie has still been able to keep up the strong pace. With a possible $31.19M opening day compared to Freddy's, movie theaters should be thanking Warners after this tough Q1.
To make matters even better, A Minecraft Movie is showcasing strong demands at both theaters. Given its near matching theater capacities, there are signs of strong walk-up potential ahead. If that is the case, not only can this number surge, but the weekend will continue to be on the up and up.
With a projected $37.97M Th+Fri opening, A Minecraft Movie looks to finally be the success story theaters have been looking for, quality be damned. With a potential opening of $108M+, this will not only give WB a win against its ambitious $150M price tag, but will give cinemas a needed boost for April and beyond.
After a less than encouraging start to the year, who would have thought that A Minecraft Movie would be the one to breathe some life back into moviegoing. Even if quality is not what audiences hoped for, they still paid the price, proving to studios, once again, that if just enough of the boxes are checked, video game movies are unstoppable. One may say...the superheroes of the 2020s.
