A Minecraft Movie is the latest in a string of big-budget film and TV releases to draw on video game IP. Against a budget of $150m, it has so far grossed upwards of $550m, making it the second-highest-grossing video game-based film of all time – behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie - and the highest-grossing Hollywood release of 2025. 

Its success has somewhat permeated the game too, with moderate increases in player activity and downloads across platforms. For a 16-year-old title with around 170m monthly active users, this is impressive. Its strong cross-media performance can, in part, be attributed to its entanglement with social media giant TikTok and as a result, a generation of young people.

Marketing strategy drives up pre-release player numbers

The most significant growth in daily active players of Minecraft on console platforms PlayStation and Xbox came the weekend before the film was released, with increases of 25% and 14% on the 29^th and 30^th of March versus the Saturday and Sunday prior. This coincided with – and was almost certainly fuelled by - the introduction of some free, movie-related downloadable content (DLC). It is a similar picture on mobile, with downloads of Minecraft surging in the two weeks leading up to the movie premiere. AppMagic data indicates that an 11% increase was seen on Saturday 22^nd, compared to the previous week, and there was a further 12% increase  on Saturday 29^th, before normalising around the movie launch period. 

On the Sunday after the movie was released – April 6^th – console players were up by another 17% week-on-week. This saw Minecraft rise to sixth place in terms of DAUs on PlayStation and Xbox at 3.7m, amassing double the number of players seen a month prior. The growth around this period was partly driven by theatre-goers looking to obtain their free in-game jet pack add-on, which was available to consumers who saw the film on its opening weekend – just one of the numerous marketing campaigns in the lead-up to the Minecraft movie launch, including holographic displays, AR experiences and Snapchat filters in malls, and a McDonald’s partnership offering limited edition collectible toys. 

Social media frenzy piques interest of hard-to-reach Gens Z & Alpha

The movie has proven a huge hit with Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers, with Minecraft memes and raucous behaviour in theatres in response to various catchphrases used by the cast swamping social media platforms; notably TikTok. Such viral content is inescapable, but it is difficult to engineer, and is typically organic. However, the widespread disruption in cinemas, while keeping the film in the spotlight, is in many cases cusping on anti-social, so may not be a trend that marketers seek to replicate.

Are video games now the favoured source material for TV and film content? 

Although games IP has been touted as the next leading source of inspiration for the big and small screens,  there are some limitations – especially when comparing video games to comic books. Thus far, there have been a very small number of commercially successful games-based films in a sea of failures, whereas there have been countless profitable comic book-based entries. While Minecraft and Mario are success stories, the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Doom and Borderlands have flopped, underlining how even well-loved and well-entrenched game franchises are not guaranteed to generate high viewership. 

In fact, the film content based on games IP that has been successful has broadly been aimed at children, and has been poorly received by critics, which suggests that complex storylines, character development and emotional depth are not necessarily key to a successful adaptation – at least in the movie space. 

What’s more, Minecraft and Mario are among the most-sold and most-recognised video game franchises of all time: very few other games share that space, and can compete on their level of popularity. These are IPs which have managed to transcend their respective generations and subsequently, the games medium, making them ripe for cross-media exploitation. Again, very few other IPs can boast such achievements. 

A true measure of success may be the performance of further film and TV content based on these franchises – can the upcoming 2026 Super Mario Bros Movie sequel replicate the profits of its predecessor? And does the indefinite article in the title imply that A Minecraft Movie could be the first of many? Or will the novelty have worn thin if adaptations continue to ramp up in the near future?