A Minecraft Movie stormed the box office over the weekend, registering the biggest weekend of the year and claiming the top debut of all time for a video game adaptation. The movie’s $163M domestic bow helped it topple Barbie ($162M) for Warner Bros. best post-pandemic opening weekend.
Exhibitors welcomed the success with sold-out auditoriums and packed theaters. Minecraft delivered the second biggest April weekend since 2019 for AMC Theatres’ domestic and international circuits regarding attendance, box office sales, and overall revenue, including concessions. 33 percent of AMC’s opening weekend audience for Minecraft in the United States came from premium auditoriums. AMC announced a series of new premium format deals at CinemaCon last week, including the expansion of its Dolby Cinema and IMAX footprint, along with the introduction of ScreenX and 4DX auditoriums in its U.S. circuit. The investment is part of the circuit’s AMC Go Plan initiative, improving its locations through seating upgrades, theater renovations, and additional premium auditoriums.
“This weekend’s impressive box office result makes two things very clear. First, as we’ve been saying for many months, after an expected slow start to the box office in 2025, the rest of the year looks to be much stronger. We expect to see one movie title after another in rapid succession bringing moviegoers into our theatres in droves. And second, the over-indexing of attendance in the PLF auditoriums of our theatres demonstrates that our guests have a keen preference for premium experiences,” said AMC Chairman and CEO Adam Aron. “This is further confirmation that there is significant opportunity for AMC to grow revenues and enhance guest satisfaction by our investing in the expansion of PLF offerings at AMC Theatres and ODEON Cinemas. We thank and congratulate A Minecraft Movie‘s filmmakers, and our good friends and partners at Warner Bros. Pictures. This was a film made and marketed to appeal to a massive moviegoing audience. We look forward to the movie’s continued success in our theatres over the next several weeks, and to welcoming more exciting and guest-pleasing titles in the weeks and months to come.”
Cinemark, the third-largest circuit in North America, also saw great success across its fleet of premium auditoriums. The circuit registered its highest-grossing weekend ever in D-Box motion seating auditoriums.
“Cinemark auditoriums were packed with enthusiastic fans as A Minecraft Movie built a must-see-on-the-big-screen experience for moviegoers of all ages, driving an all-time family film record as well as best-ever D-Box motion seat ticket sales weekend for our company,” said Sean Gamble, Cinemark President & CEO. “After an exhilarating week with our fellow exhibitors and studio partners at CinemaCon, we are thrilled to see further validation that movie theaters provide positive, shared entertainment, build community, and meaningfully amplify the wonder and excitement of captivating stories. Congratulations to everyone at Warner Bros. Discovery for delivering such a fantastic film and thank you to the Cinemark team for serving so many excited guests.”
Minecraft‘s blockbuster debut was perfectly timed for cinemas, coming off the momentum from CinemaCon 2025, where studios presented a diverse, eclectic, and expansive theatrical slate that should help propel this year to a new box office benchmark in the post-pandemic era. Minecraft‘s record-breaking debut is particularly welcome given the lackluster nature of Q1 2025 at the box office; Cineplex, Canada’s largest exhibitor and the fourth largest chain in North America, notes that their box office receipts for the first weekend of April amount to over half of what they brought in during the entire month of March 2025. 64 percent of A Minecraft Movie‘s opening weekend ticket sales at Cinemark came from premium experiences.
“It’s been the biggest surprise of 2025 so far. All we needed was CinemaCon to ignite the industry—and it did just that,” said Brock Bagby, President, Chief Content, Programming & Development Officer at B&B Theatres. “A Minecraft Movie exceeded even our wildest expectations, and we’re incredibly grateful to our friends at Warner Bros. Momentum builds momentum, and we’re confident the rest of the year will continue to be strong for the industry as a whole.”
“This weekend, Vue saw a phenomenal, record-breaking opening for Minecraft: the biggest since Barbie and the largest in history for a video game adaptation,” added Tim Richards CBE, founder and CEO of Vue International, one of the world’s largest exhibition circuits. “We are expecting this amazing performance to continue this week across all of our European markets. This is another round of great news for cinemas following last week’s announcement by Amazon that they are committing to releasing 14 feature-length movies a year for the big screen.”
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