Guess what? CHICKEN JOCKEY!

Taking over the world–and the internet–this weekend is A Minecraft Movie, which absolutely destroyed tracking with a massive $157 million stateside and $301 million globally. For those keeping score, that’s more than double where expectations had it. In fact, domestically Minecraft was looking to land in the $60 million frame, which goes to show that tracking really is fucking useless sometimes, as the people responsible for it clearly had no clue just how popular the video game is with children.

And make no mistake, this movie is functioning like Rocky Horror Picture Show for kids, with packed auditoriums going crazy and clapping along at certain lines, to the point where the police have apparently been called, and maybe I’m not woke enough, but I feel like the cops have better things to do than silence teenagers who are yelling “CHICKEN JOCKEY” for shits and giggles. I’ve seen social media overreacting to all of this, with users claiming “it’s the worst film they’ve seen in years” (which is, you know, the exact same thing they said about Snow White a few weeks ago) and theorizing that the movie is only making money from people hate-watching it (which is…just stupid, okay?).

I don’t normally like saying “this film wasn’t made for critics, and that’s okay,” but A Minecraft Movie really wasn’t made for critics, and that’s okay. Reviews were mixed at best, complaining about there being way too many characters and subplots (including Jennifer Coolidge essentially playing the airhead version of herself in those Discover commercials getting involved in an, erm, interesting love story). Others just called it flat-out unwatchable. And yet A Minecraft Movie is performing like fucking Barbie, so Rotten Tomatoes simply doesn’t matter for this outing. And again, that’s okay.

For those who care, A Minecraft Movie scored the best three-day opening ever for a video game film (note that The Super Mario Bros. Movie came out on a Wednesday), and is by far the biggest premiere of 2025 so far. Even better, it has the rest of April to itself. Another Minecraft Movie is absolutely happening.

There were, believe it or not, other openers this week. Hell of a Summer, which looked to be a parody of summer camp slasher films, crashed and burned with a dismal $1.7 million, which even for NEON isn’t what they want. Personally, I thought this looked simply insufferable (everyone is yelling all the time), even though the trailer is loaded with enthusiastic critic blurbs. Also, Jesus is back at it again with The Chosen: The Last Supper: Part Two, and the audience for this remains healthy for what is, again, a bunch of TV episodes which people will be able to watch for free in a few weeks. Finally, the dog doesn’t die in The Friend (but Bill Murray does), and I guess it did fine for a Bleecker Street release.

Anyway, the top ten, via The Numbers (I might be late with this report, but not as late as Deadline has been with getting their full chart up)