“A Minecraft Movie” delivered huge boxoffice, but with unexpected rowdy behavior in cinemas by some youthful moviegoers.
The Warner Bros. Pictures adaptation of the hit video game generated a blockbuster $130 million domestically its opening weekend, April 3-6, which was double prerelease research tracking. To date, the parental guidance-rated (PG) movie starring Jack Black (pictured above) collected $200 Million in domestic boxoffice (U.S. and Canada) and $352 million globally.
The boxoffice was like a sweet rain after a drought, given an early-year boxoffice slump, but with a dark cloud. “Teens have been wrecking theaters during ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ throwing popcorn buckets, spilling soda, jumping on seats, vomiting and breaking out into fights,” wrote Jeanette Settembre in the New York Post newspaper. “Cops have been called to deal with the unruliness, and staffers are stuck clearing up the awful mess, according to employees and videos seen on social media.”
Moviegoers erupt when a baby zombie appears on cinema screens riding a chicken like a horse, which is a sequence that is sourced from the videogame. This can be called a sort of “Easter egg,” which is marketing lingo for embedding an element that conveys hidden meaning, such as an inside joke.
Perhaps a memo should go out to movie marketers to seed their youth-culture films with Easter eggs conveying underground messages. And stoke these sub rosa communications in digital marketing that seem outlaw, and not from Hollywood.
Warner Bros. and its partner in the film, Legendary Entertainment, apparently already got the memo. Warners “made a movie that was strictly for the fans with its wink to influencers from the game, and its babble language and one-liners to which fans are jumping on their seats and singing along,” says a Deadline.com story by Anthony D’Alessandro that reads like a Case Study. “Legendary invited ‘Minecraft’ influencers to the set, gave them shout-outs in the movie, and invited 30 of them to the London world premiere. They also created content pre-release.” A Wall Street Journal article called the Warners marketing campaign steeped in “deliberate stupidity” that plays off inside jokes derived from the “Minecraft” game.
Regarding the current wave of in-theater disruptions, there are also reports that the rowdies are reacting to txt messages on their cell phones that cue mass action by patrons in screenings. Incidents were also reported overseas, including the United Kingdom. In any case, social media buzzes with comments and messages inciting moviegoers to act up.
The rowdiness seems limited to teenagers, which have prompted some theaters to require adults to accompany minors.
The outbreak is not a complete surprise. Vandalism and crime are rising in society generally, evidenced by increased theft in stores and the recent rash of electric car destruction. Theaters had been mostly spared from the sad trend until now.
Going back in history, theaters received a public safety-jolt in 1979 with R-rated street-gang drama “The Warriors” from Paramount Pictures. Real-life street thugs disrupted screenings, which was a bigger concern because many were career criminals and armed. That’s unlike the recent “Minecraft” disturbances by baby-faced miscreants.
Indeed, “Minecraft’s” mystique is reminiscent of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the strange 1975 black-comedy in which audiences talked back to the screen and came in costumes.
New Jersey theater manager David Rose said that he was dismayed by reaction of parents of rowdies who he contacted afterward incidents. The manager of the Township Theatre in Washington Township said parents brushed off his concerns saying their teenage children are just “having fun.” Rose adds that the rowdies risk severe personal injury if they fall when standing on seats or arm-rests. Not surprisingly, other moviegoers complained of being disturbed.
The ”Minecraft” movie cost $150 million to produce, which is about average for a mainstream major studio release. Audiences and critics rate the “Minecraft” as mediocre but the pop-cultural appeal of the source video game and unexpected online buzz propelled the movie’s boxoffice to the stratosphere.
The movie is based on the 2009 video game from a Swedish game developer in which players construct geometric objects while dodging various hazards. The youth audience grew up with the game, and “Minecraft” film director Jared Hess tapped into the game’s zeitgeist with various references, though corny. Hess directed off-beat dry comedy “Napoleon Dynamite” from 2004.
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