Box Office: ‘Minecraft’ Is the Unicorn We’ve Been Waiting For

For the first time since 'The Hunger Games,' Hollywood's got a live-action, new-to-cinema, sequel-friendly franchise-starter pulling top-tier tentpole-sized grosses.

No records were set as The Minecraft Movie earned $9.9 million on Monday. That’s a 79% drop from Sunday, giving the film a $172.6 million domestic and roughly $330 million worldwide cume. To be fair, that’s coming off WB’s biggest Saturday gross ever ($59 million), which was even larger than its $58 million Friday, which included $10.5 million in Thursday previews. Heck, a film of this size and scale earning about as much on Sunday ($46.2 million) as on its “pure” Friday ($47.5 million) is impressive. Among video game movies, the $150 million Warner Bros. Discovery/Legendary flick will vault past The Angry Birds Movie ($355 million in 2016, with an Angry Birds Movie 3 due from Sony Paramount in early 2027) tonight or tomorrow to enter the top ten in unadjusted global grosses.

Barring a complete collapse, it’ll race past the $405-$492 million likes of Uncharted, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Rampage, Detective Pikachu, Warcraft and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 over the weekend to end Sunday as the #2 video game movie grosser behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.3 billion). I asked in November 2015 whether The Hunger Games ($2.95 billion over four films) would be Hollywood’s last new-to-cinema live-action franchise to achieve top-tier box office heights. It was, at least, until now. With a sequel sure to follow sooner rather than later, WBD and Legendary’s Minecraft is likely to be the first of its kind, not a rebooted Spider-Man or a revived Star Wars, in a generation. With a likely over/under $600 million global cume by next Sunday, Minecraft looks to be that unicorn we’ve waited for.