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Based on what it's opening weekend could potentially be, do we think it's possible for Minecraft to make a billion? I think it could have a shot but I don't know if it have legs over the next few weeks. Still think it has a solid shot and kids and families don't really care about reviews when it comes to this movie.

Firstly, Jared Hess has directed 7 movies since his feature length directorial debut with Napoleon Dynamite in 2004. A Minecraft Movie has already surpassed the worldwide grosses of all his previous movies on its opening day. Here are the numbers:

1) A Minecraft Movie (2025) - $110.7 million 2) Nacho Libre (2006) - $99.3 million 3) Napoleon Dynamite (2004) - $46.1 million 4) Masterminds (2016) - $29.7 million 5) Gentlemen Broncos (2009) - $118,192 (limited release; wide release cancelled by poor reception) 6) Don Verdean (2015) - $31,309 (straight to VOD movie with a limited release) 7) Thelma the Unicorn (2024) - N/A (straight to Netflix)

And now for the second part of this. When researching these numbers earlier, I discovered that Jared Hess is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church). This made me curious about what the top grossing film directed by a Mormon is. Lucky for me, the Church keeps all these numbers on a page so they can brag. However, they had some exaggerations so I couldn’t rely on the LDS website alone.

Their listed highest grossing film is the IMAX documentary that plays at the Grand Canyon (Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets). The Numbers claims that it grossed $239 million, but the Mormon website says that the director, Kieth Merrill, disputes that gross and that it’s actually made over $400 million. I also excluded another IMAX documentary Mysteries of Egypt that the Mormons claim made $70 million (Box Office Mojo claims it made $44 million).

The LDS site has a list of the highest grossing movies directed by Mormons, but only included the domestic numbers. I used Box Office Mojo (or the Numbers when data was missing) to pull up the worldwide grosses of all these films. Doing that I developed this list of the top five worldwide grosses of Hollywood films directed by a Mormon:

1) Anatasia - $139.8 million (Don Bluth) 2) Nacho Libre (2006) - $99.3 million (Jared Hess) 3) The Land Before Time - $84.5 million (Don Bluth) 4) An American Tail - $84 million (Don Bluth) 5) The Fox and the Hound - $63.5 million (one of three directors, Richard Rich, was Mormon)

In terms of this list, A Minecraft Movie is already the second highest grossing movie directed by a Mormon. It will pass Anastasia today to become the highest grossing movie directed by a Mormon. It will eventually pass the LDS exaggerated gross of Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets too (~$400 million).

To summarize, not only is ‘A Minecraft Movie’ already the highest grossing film by Jared Hess, it is also going to become the highest grossing movie directed by a Mormon.

Daily Box Office(April 5th 2025)

The market hits ¥138M/$19M which is down -13% from yesterday and up +100% from last week.

Province map of the day:

Minecraft loses ground to both Ne Zha 2 and We Girls today.

https://imgsli.com/MzY2OTE3

In Metropolitan cities:

Minecraft wins Beijing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and Hangzhou

City tiers:

Ne Zha 2 climbs to 3rd in T1 and T2. Overtakes We Girls in T3. We Girls jumps Minecraft in T4.

Tier 1: Minecraft>We Girls>Ne Zha 2

Tier 2: Minecraft>We Girls>Ne Zha 2

Tier 3: Minecraft>Ne Zha 2>We Girls

Tier 4: Ne Zha 2>We Girls>Minecraft

Pre-Sales map for tomorrow

Minecraft dominates pre-sales for Sunday.

https://i.imgur.com/sl70w2I.png

Minecraft

Minecraft delivers a $4.98M Saturday taking the total gross to $11.48M. Almost matching Super Mario's 5 day opening of $11.61M already.

Weekend still on track for around $15M-ish.

WoM figures:

Decent reception out of the gate. Not quite as strong as Mario which opened with 9.4 on Maoyan.

Maoyan: 9.1 , Taopiaopiao: 9.3 , Douban:

Gender Split(M-W): 49-51

Gender Rating Split: Maoyan: M(8.8)/W(9.4), Taopiaopiao: M(8.9)/W(9.5)

Language split: English: 68.2%, Mandarin: 31.8%

Scheduled showings update for Minecraft for the next few days:

Ne Zha 2

Ne Zha 2 not quite as good as projected but still the only movie in the top 5 to increase over yesterdays holiday with $4M on Saturday taking the total gross in China to $2090.07M.

Does indeed pip We Girls for 2nd today as it heads for a $10M+ 10th weekend. $11M+ 4 day.

With International gross added Ne Zha 2 has now reached $2147M+ and will cross $2150M+ tomorrow.

Ne Zha 2 also crossed 318M admissions meaning its now doubled Wolf Warrior 2's 159M admissions.

Gross split:

Ne Zha 2 will exceed $2.15B tomorrow.

Mongolia and the whole of Scandinavia set for a release at the end of April.

It has now officialy been confirmed for an India release on Ne Zha 2 on April 24th. According to rumors it could get up to 3 separate dubs but this is far from confirmed.

It will also release in France on April 23rd.

Weekly pre-sales vs last week

Pre-sales for tomorrow are down -29% versus last week and down -46% vs yesterday.

Sunday: ¥3.77M vs ¥2.68M (-29%)

Monday: ¥0.53M vs ¥0.19M (-64%)

Tuesday: ¥0.43M vs ¥0.13M (-69%)

WoM figures:

Maoyan: 9.8 , Taopiaopiao: 9.7 , Douban: 8.5

Ne Zha 2 is the best rated movie of all time on Maoyan.

Gender Split(M-W): 40-60

Gender Rating Split: Maoyan: M(9.8)/W(9.8), Taopiaopiao: M(9.6)/W(9.7)

Screen Distribution Split: Regular: $1890.86M, IMAX: $155.74M, Rest: $43.45M

Language split: Mandarin: 100%

Scheduled showings update for Ne Zha 2 for the next few days:

Other stuff:

The next holywood movie releasing is Minecraft on April 4th followed by the re-release of Furious 7 on the 11th.

Release Schedule:

A table including upcoming movies in the next month alongside trailers linked in the name of the movie, Want To See data from both Maoyan and Taopiaopiao alongside the Gender split and genre.

Remember Want To See is not pre-sales. Its just an anticipation metric. A checkbox of sorts saying your interested in an upcoming movie.

Not all movies are included since a lot are just too small to be worth covering.

April:

May/Labor Day Holiday(May 1st-5th)Lineup

May

Now that A Minecraft Movie is tracking to do at least $140M this weekend, I curious to how much Sinners grosses as it opens during Minecraft's 3rd weekend. Here's my prediction.

1. Sinners - $48
2. A Minecraft Movie - $37

A reminder for the Summer 2025 Predictions Game, especially now that Cinema Con is over and we have various films like have new trailers and other films that were shown have solidified their release in the summer. I have about 39 responses so far and would like to have more before April ends.

For all of those who've submitted previously but would like to change their predictions in light of the news, you can submit again.

Follow the links below for the this year's Summer release Schedule:

https://metacritic.com/news/upcoming-movie-release-dates-schedule/

https://www.firstshowing.net/schedule2025/

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/release-schedule/2025

Submit your list here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeqwqx6Uj55MBc5kslRHPVdYRa01hk4TL4lNIKu0CXUAt5ZrQ/viewform?usp=dialog