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A Minecraft Movie’s meme-shaped success

Credit: Warner Bros.
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London, UK
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Gen Z fans have propelled the eponymous film to ridiculous heights thanks to memes and theatre mayhem.

Who would’ve thought a movie based on the most popular game of all time would be a smash hit? Honestly, not me.

Unless you’ve just woken up from a coma spanning back to 2009, you’ll know all about Minecraft, the global smash sandbox that allows players to create their own worlds one block at a time while encountering zombies, talking pigs, magical artefacts, and other fun nonsense.

After nigh-on two decades in the wild, it remains a pillar of both gaming and streaming culture, boasting a massive playerbase of 200 million while millions more tune in to watch others play on Twitch and YouTube.

It’s not over-egging the pudding to call Minecraft a mega-franchise, but it appears we may have underestimated just how much influence it still holds over an entire generation in big 2025.

When the reveal trailer for A Minecraft Movie first popped up across social media and on YouTube, the first peek was about as well received as the Sonic the Hedgehog promos of 2020 – and whatever that furry abomination that shared the name of SEGA’s hero was supposed to be before the redesign.

Early shots of Jack Black and Jason Momoa prancing around dodgily animated CGI versions of the game’s pixelated characters conjured a familiar sense of dread. Reactions around the Thred office unanimously included three words, which you can guess for yourself.

Disappointed fans vented online mostly about the visual style, which can almost be described as uncanny valley in reverse, expressing frustration that the movie seemed destined to join the scrapheap of crap video game adaptions like Borderlands or the Doom movies… am I showing my age? Damn.

Those of us predicting a box office flop couldn’t have been more wrong, however. Six months on, A Minecraft Movie has scored the biggest opening of 2025 so far, generating $300 million globally and vindicating Warner Bros’ gamble as the best performing opener in video game movie history. Humble pie please (swaps out pumpkin pie).

Given how successful The Super Mario Bros. Movie was in 2023, despite early fan reservations, perhaps we should have seen this coming. Warner Bros clearly knows its audience and what it takes to win their hearts, but what specifically sealed the deal on such a grand scale? A rich plot? Quality performances? Immersion, perhaps?

Nope. It’s the memes. Gen Z are the meme generation and A Minecraft Movie is an absolute meme factory.

Despite having a fairly meagre rating among critics, audience ratings are absolutely booming. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the swing at 47% to 87%, pointing to one of two possibilities on Warner Bros’ part: extreme luck, or masterful marketing.

Whether by design or not, the community feel engendered by Minecraft as a game has translated directly into the movie realm. According to those who’ve seen it, the movie essentially plays out like a big fan service almost inviting excitable fans to indulge and partake in the least appropriate of settings.

@whatsup_bayarea

Some theaters are banning unaccompanied kids from *A Minecraft Movie* screenings due to wild “Chicken Jockey” chaos! 🍗🎬 Fans are going nuts, throwing popcorn, and shouting along—leading to police calls and new rules. Have you seen the madness? #MinecraftMovie #ChickenJockey #MovieNews

♬ original sound – Bay_Bite

In cinemas across the States, groups of Gen Zers are appearing in TikTok videos excitedly jumping around cinema screens throwing buckets of popcorn and shouting references to the franchise’s lore.

The family-friendly chaos is reminiscent of 2022’s screenings of Minions: The Rise of Gru, where groups of mostly young men rocked up to theatres donning suits and in full interactive mode. In almost identical fashion, this rare opportunity to embrace communal silliness gave box office turnouts for the movie a major boost.

A Minecraft Movie has achieved this phenomenon on a scale never before seen, turning attendance to the movie into something of a meme in itself. People are literally hoisting eachother in the air, and in one viral video a chicken is let loose in the theatre. If you search ‘chicken jockey’ on social media, you’ll see countless videos of people screaming in hilarity at the moment a zombie rides a chicken – which is apparently a rare, but exciting occurrence in the game.

While this type of raucous audience participation won’t be of appeal to many serious cinema goers, Hollywood big wigs will be gawking at the box office numbers and the incredible publicity that Gen Z has created, wondering how it can be replicated in the future.

It’s a difficult art to nail with any real certainty, however. The quality of the actual movie isn’t paramount here, it’s the nuance of tapping into that sense of pent-up excitement which still lingers in a generation that spent months in lockdown. How long this cultural tendency will live is also hard to say. Keep a keen eye on the upcoming Until Dawn movie.

If there’s one thing to take away from this with any sort of certainty, it’s that ideas for a Fortnite adaption will be being thrown around long conference tables. Money talks, and Gen Z hold ridiculous spending power.

Editor in Chief London, UK

I’m Jamie (He/Him), the Editor in Chief at Thred. Keeping up with gaming and revolutionary technology is my forte, but when away from my keyboard, you’ll probably find me wrapped around a large Tango ice blast at the latest mediocre horror flick. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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