Minecraft’s gotten more than a trillion views online. Can it champion the box office?

Since coming out in 2011, Minecraft has sold more than 300 million copies and gotten more than a trillion views on YouTube. Its early popularity helped shape the platform (and others in the gaming space, like Twitch) into what they are today, and despite challengers like Fortnite and Roblox, Minecraft is still one of the internet’s most popular games, with top creators netting hundreds of millions of views each month.

But does that mean Minecraft can succeed at the box office?

We’ve talked a lot lately about how Hollywood is looking to online content creators to make its next hit movies. Well, it’s also looking to online trends and fandoms to see what might hit big with audiences, and Warner Bros. is no doubt hoping to follow up the nostalgia-soaked success of Barbie with A Minecraft Movie.

Starring Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Jennifer Coolidge, and more, A Minecraft Movie (releasing April 4, 2025) follows four misfits who are isekai’d into the Minecraft world and must figure out how to survive its iconic enemies–with the help of its iconic NPCs.

The film’s first teaser trailer dropped today, and reactions are mixed at best, with commenters on YouTube criticizing its graphics and comparing it to the ultra green-screened Borderlands adaptation, which just debuted to very meh reviews. (Some are comparing the design of A Minecraft Movie

‘s piglins and sheep to Sonic‘s original live-action design, which is…not great.)

Something we find kind of charming are the number of comments saying the teaser feels like a skit Minecraft YouTubers would’ve made in 2013. Maybe going into the film with that perspective will set viewers up to enjoy a big-screen interpretation of the game that’s consistently been at the center of major online fandoms, from Rooster Teeth to Dream SMP.

“They legit hired ‘Minecraft Mobs in Real Life‘ youtubers in 2014 as graphic designers,” one commenter chimed.

Whether the movie ends up being good or liked, we anticipate seeing a lot about it in the coming months. Warner Bros. knows it has to tap online audiences to get butts in theater seats: it recently pacted with Roblox to promote Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and indicated it’s got plans to continue promoting movies across digital platforms. (It’s also advertising the ‘juice sequel on TikTok, which is becoming extremely effective at selling movies to its users.)

If Warner Bros.’ marketing department is savvy, they’ll enlist Minecraft‘s dedicated legion of YouTubers–and we’ll be keeping an eye on any partnerships to see if they can drive box office figures as high as online view counts.