Why A Minecraft Movie was 2025’s most important film

The blockbuster based on the brick-building video game came top at the US box office – and, with their “chicken-jockey” chaos, its colourful screenings pointed to the future of cinema.

Oppenheimer is a cerebral drama with Cillian Murphy as the scientist who invents the atom bomb. A Minecraft Movie is a zany video game adaptation with Jack Black belting out a song about “lava chicken”. But the two films have a lot in common. The obvious thing is that they each made almost $1bn at the global box office: A Minecraft Movie is currently the highest grossing film of 2025 in the US, as well as the fourth biggest film in the world, and Oppenheimer was the third biggest film globally in 2023. But the other connection is that they both show how radically cinema-going has changed since the Covid-19 pandemic. Audiences interacted with the two films in comparable, culture-shifting ways – which is why A Minecraft Movie is the most important cinema release of the year.

Not that its success was a total surprise. In 2024, the 10th biggest film in the world was Sonic the Hedgehog 3, another video-game adaptation. In 2023, the second biggest film in the world – one place above Oppenheimer – was The Super Mario Bros Movie. Also in 2023, Five Nights at Freddy’s was so lucrative that a sequel came out earlier this month, and next year we can look forward to Mortal Kombat 2, Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros Galaxy. Meanwhile, two of the most acclaimed current television series are The Last of Us and Fallout. Now that superhero blockbusters aren’t as all-conquering as they were a few years ago, video games are Hollywood’s new favourite pieces of intellectual property.

All the same, Minecraft wasn’t the most promising candidate for big-screen treatment. It’s not that it isn’t a cultural phenomenon: it’s the best-selling video game ever made, and the brightly coloured, right-angle-heavy merchandise is everywhere. But the fact is that it’s set in a world composed entirely of pixelated blocks representing different minerals, and the player’s job is to break or “mine” these blocks in order to build things. Entrusting this curious game to Jared Hess, the director of such oddball comedies as Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, didn’t sound like the obvious way to sell more cinema tickets than the latest entries in the Mission: Impossible and Jurassic World series. Then came the reviews. A Minecraft Movie scored 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, the reviews round-up site, a typical assessment being that it was a “garish, headache-inducing… lumpen splodge of commercial propaganda”, as Kevin Maher put it in his one-star review for the Times.

The rowdiness it caused

Audiences didn’t agree. The film overperformed on its opening weekend in April, noting it entertained children and adults alike. “When dads like a family film, that’s a good thing,” said Steve Buck, chief strategy officer at industry analysts EntTelligence. The unusual aspect, though, was that viewers weren’t just chuckling at Black’s antics in a blocky alternate universe called the Overworld. They were joining in. Primed by the trailers, and especially by the way Black declaimed every phrase with manic enthusiasm, the game’s fans shouted out whenever they recognised a line or a meme, they threw popcorn in the air, and they generally behaved as if they were at a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The key rabble-rousing moment, inspired by a rarely-seen character from the game, was when a green-skinned zombie child jumped on the back of a hen (that actually looked more like a duck) and Black warned, “Chicken jockey!” Minecraft lovers went wild. Some Utah cinemagoers even brought their own live chicken to a screening. And at some US showings, it’s reported that the police were called.

Unsurprisingly, the rowdiness didn’t go down well with everyone. A column in The Guardian was headlined, “There’s a place for audience participation, but ‘chicken jockey’ chaos goes too far”; the article concluded with a stern admonition: “Maybe it is time for the grownups to lay down the law.” But, judging by the ticket sales, plenty of grownups relished the chicken jockey chaos. A British comedian, Sam Avery, said that seeing A Minecraft Movie with his sons was “honestly the most joyous cinema-going experience I’ve ever had”. The film’s director may have been biased, but he was in favour of the chaos, too. “It’s been way too fun,” Hess said in Entertainment Weekly. “People are sending me these really hilarious speeches that a lot of teenagers are giving right before the movie… It’s great, especially when people are climbing on their friends’ shoulders and standing up and cheering for those moments… But, man, I’m just glad people are making memories with their friends and families.”

Hess’s comment about people “sending” him speeches indicates a crucial factor: people weren’t just going to A Minecraft Movie to shout, clap and exercise their poultry, but to film themselves doing all of the above so that they could post the videos on TikTok and other social media sites. It’s doubly galling for those of us who like to watch our films in silence: the only thing worse than hearing other people talking in the cinema is seeing other people using their phones, and Minecraft-mania is reliant on both. But these viral videos gave the film a huge amount of free publicity. The Rocky Horror Picture Show took years to build a cult following. In 2025, thanks to smartphones and social media, A Minecraft Movie achieved that status within a weekend.

Nor is it unique. In 2022, there was the “Gentleminions” trend, when teenage boys filmed themselves attending Minions: The Rise of Gru while dressed in smart suits and carrying bananas. And at the same time as these accidental, unpredictable crazes were popping up, studios pushed their own officially sanctioned ways to get viewers actively involved in their films. Wicked had singalong screenings, with introductions by its stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and the lyrics appearing as subtitles. “The movie is great as is,” wrote Jenelle Riley in Variety, “but if you want an elevated experience, there’s nothing like getting your geek on with a theatre of like-minded fans.” In May, Warner Bros gave in to the inevitable and announced special audience-participation screenings of A Minecraft Movie.

The changing cinema experience

All of which brings us back to Oppenheimer. When the news broke that Christopher Nolan’s deeply serious biopic was coming out on the same day as Barbie in 2023, the clash of two such wildly contrasting releases was nicknamed Barbenheimer. At first it was assumed that cinemagoers would choose to see one film or the other; what happened instead was that many chose to see both of them, one after the other, while dressing in pink or black to express their allegiance. Barbenheimer became an event – an outing to be enjoyed with friends while dressed in a themed outfit and drinking a themed cocktail. A Minecraft Movie had a similar sort of appeal. And cinema-owners should probably be grateful.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of streaming were both disastrous for cinemas, but what the industry and the public are discovering is that sharing a film with a crowd can be a world apart from watching it on television on your own. It can be like going to a party or a championship final. It can be an occasion. Just look at how horror films are thriving, with The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Sinners and Weapons all in 2025’s global top 20. The writer-director of Sinners, Ryan Coogler, has talked about wanting to recreate the electrifying atmosphere of a rock concert, and in an interview in Screen International, he elaborated that horror films are enhanced by being seen with others. “I think that since the pandemic, it’s caused everybody to re-evaluate what makes communal events so special, and horror, like comedy, is really fun to watch with a crowd,” he said. “There is something exhilarating about being scared in a room full of strangers in the dark… Maybe I’ll get a jolt, or I’ll hear someone else get scared. It becomes a circular feedback thing. There is an interactivity to a movie that has those horror elements that’s really great.”

The Eventifying of Cinema? The Rocky Horrifying of Cinema? Whatever you call it, this interactivity has contributed to the box-office takings of films from Oppenheimer to A Minecraft Movie, from Minions to Sinners, which means that it has contributed to cinemas’ post-pandemic survival. And there is bound to be a lot more of it in the future. Some of the chicken-related shenanigans may have people spitting feathers, but arthouse aficionados can reassure themselves that the average Palme d’Or-winning drama probably won’t get crowds dressing up and singing along. Besides, if people are throwing around their popcorn in the screen next door, it might be just what the cinema needs to stay in business.