The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | April 11 – 13, 2025
Week 15 | April 11 – 13, 2025
1. A Minecraft Movie
Warner Bros. | Week 2
Weekend Range: $70M – $85M
Showtime Marketshare: 29%
Pros
- As we predicted on Sunday, Monday actuals gave Warner Bros.’ A Minecraft Movie a boost from $157M estimates to $162.75M, beating Barbie‘s $162M performance in 2023. That’s a tremendous testament to the walk-up business the movie did on Sunday, which will hopefully continue into this week. Of course, with numbers like this Warner Bros. is already mulling a sequel with director Jared Hess, but the real question for theaters is A) will the party continue into Frame 2 and B) will that translate to continued success with upcoming films like Sinners and Thunderbolts*? Despite five new wide releases this weekend, none of them pose a threat to Minecraft in terms of the under-25 target demo that gave the movie an “A” CinemaScore.
Cons
- Our prediction panel foresees a sophomore frame drop around or slightly above -50% for Minecraft despite the movie’s thrust into “viral social phenomenon” category. The best case scenario would be something akin to Barbie‘s $93M (-43%) second frame. Critics were stick-in-the-muds about A Minecraft Movie, hitting it with a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, word-of-mouth makes this a cinematic experience, so reviews and overall “B+” CinemaScore will likely be overridden by the impulse to see this movie theatrically with a giddy audience. Let’s also hope China does not institute a ban on American films over recent tariffs, as that is Minecraft’s second-biggest overseas territory with $14.5M so far, ending Ne Zha 2′s reign at the top in that market.
2. The King of Kings
Angel Studios | NEW
Weekend Range: $12M – $18M
Showtime Marketshare: 10%
Pros
- Based on a story by Charles Dickens, The King of Kings is a kid-friendly computer-animated Jesus story featuring a stellar mainstream voice cast including Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, and Oscar Isaac. This one has some real sleeper potential given the proximity to Easter. While Fathom’s The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 3 can be seen as competition, King of Kings has the upper hand since it’s more family-friendly and Part 2 underperformed last weekend compared to Part 1. King of Kings has been gaining ground in pre-sales and could easily overperform well beyond our forecasted ceiling. Because of the competition this weekend, however, we’re keeping a conservative forecast while acknowledging a potential for a breakthrough performance.
Cons
- Biblical animated movies are generally relegated to DTV territory, although Dreamworks made some modest coin on their big-budget Old Testament 2D offering The Prince of Egypt back in 1999 ($101.4M domestic). More recently, Sony’s Affirm Films put out The Star in November of 2017, a Nativity story with talking animals that opened to $9.8M before pulling in $40.8M domestic. Between The Chosen and the other feature The Last Supper ($6.48M domestic total) there’s been a lot of competition for the faith-based dollar, so hopefully the animated nature of this one helps it stand out.
3. The Amateur
20th Century Studios | NEW
Weekend Range: $12M – $15M
Showtime Marketshare: 10%
Pros
- 20th Century Studios under Disney steps out of its IP comfort zone to bring us an original espionage revenge thriller starring Oscar-winner Rami Malek. The idea of a hero who’s less about Bourne-style beat-downs and more Saw-esque traps to take on the bad guys who iced his wife is appealing, plus the supporting cast is a murderer’s row of top-notch character actors, including Rachel Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Stuhlbarg. This one has a little more youth appeal than the recent spy clunker Black Bag ($20.69M domestic total), plus the Disney marketing machine behind it makes this a potential franchise-starter for Malek, who also produced.
Cons
- The Amateur should open ahead of A24’s Warfare (a movie with no real hook beyond being another Iraq War film ala Hurt Locker), but the worst case would be both cannibalizing each other on opening weekend. Amateur is the more commercial title of the two, and a decent targeted ad campaign should help lift it into third place as an adult-skewing genre counter-programmer. As for its long-term prospects, it doesn’t help that two weeks from now we get another nerd-hero actioner in The Accountant 2… also featuring Bernthal.
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