Screenings have descended into utter pandemonium, with demented teenagers and twentysomethings drowning each other in flying popcorn, letting off confetti cannons and jumping out of their seats to scream at their top of their lungs.
Buckets of water have been thrown and live chickens smuggled into the film, prompting panicked cinema managers to read young audiences the riot act.
Such has been the unhinged excitement on both sides of the Pond that has greeted a new feature film, A Minecraft Movie, which is sweeping all before it at the US box-office.
The last time there was anything like this sort of commotion surrounding a new film release was over the 2023 comedy Barbie. But the latter’s ‘pretty in pink’ parades pale beside the jaw-dropping bedlam that’s currently taking place at a cinema near you.
Like Barbie, A Minecraft Movie is a spin-off of a much-loved product, although in this case it’s a video game not a toy.
And not just any video game but the most popular one ever made.
Created by Swedish game designer Markus ‘Notch’ Persson in 2009, Minecraft – a so-called ‘sandbox game’ in which players move randomly through a virtual world ‘mining’ raw materials like stone, wood and iron to create ever more elaborate buildings and constructions – has notched up more than 300 million sales and 200 million monthly players, mainly of school age.
The £115 million film version – in the works since 2014 and starring Jack Black, Jason Momoa and the White Lotus actress Jennifer Coolidge – made more than £230 million on its opening weekend alone (beating Barbie) and was still in top place in US cinemas last Friday as it became the third-highest-grossing film of 2025.
Jack Black and Jason Momoa in A Minecraft Movie, which is about a mismatched foursome in modern day Idaho who are pulled through a mysterious portal into a Minecraft-like cubic wonderland called the Overworld
It’s even packing in punters in China where it’s been the most popular Hollywood film this year.
Nostalgia for an online activity that has absorbed endless hours for millions of children, mainly boys, explains a major part of the film’s appeal.
A lot of critics gave the film the thumbs-down. But then, it’s unlikely any of them ever played the game – beyond looking over their children’s shoulders at Minecraft’s old-fashioned building block graphics and laborious gameplay, and wondering what all the fuss was about.
Fan fervour has been further stoked by the habitually-raucous social media platform TikTok where cinema-goers have been encouraged to share video footage of their exuberance – the wilder the better – at A Minecraft Movie screenings.
TikTok is to blame for a particular scene in the film setting off the cinema frenzies. In it, hulking Momoa and Black are in a wrestling ring, sizing up to a chicken when a wooden crate slowly descends from above.
A little green zombie baby drops out of it and lands astride the bird, his cute smile instantly turning into a snarl as he spurs his steed towards their opponents.
‘Chicken jockey!’ calls out Black, uttering one of many Minecraft catchphrases in the film but in this case one which generally sets off cinema audiences in an orgy of flying popcorn and confetti.
It didn’t when I went to see the film, but this was in oh-so-progressive Brooklyn, New York, where parents monitor screen time and children rarely get their hands on anything so unhealthy as cinema popcorn. In other venues, however, the mayhem is getting out of hand and occasionally veering into outright vandalism.
Chicken jockey! A scene from A Minecraft Movie that has sent audiences on both sides of the Atlantic into meltdown
Some cinema managers have welcomed the audience surge after years of fretting over declining attendance figures, but many others are increasingly tired of clearing up the Minecraft mess. As one US cinema worker put it: ‘All of us cannot wait for this movie to be gone.’
At one US cinema a row of seats was ripped out, while at another police were called in to eject the rowdiest troublemakers. Some, in both America and Britain, have resorted to putting up on-screen warnings threatening police expulsion and possible legal action against any vandals.
Other measures have included banning children unless accompanied by an adult (the film has a PG rating) and turning away any large group of boys.
The UK’s Cineworld chain said that while ‘clapping, cheering, and shouting’ Minecraft catchphrases is encouraged, there should be ‘no throwing, no mess, and no filming the screen! (That’s piracy, folks)’.
Some UK picture houses have threatened to expel noisy customers without refunds or even stop screenings completely.
Noting the ‘exceptional’ audience response, Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, said most of the behaviour had been good-natured and was ‘seemingly driven by the desire of young people to share their experiences on social media’. But he asked those involved ‘to be mindful of the enjoyment of other cinema-goers’.
Hollywood bosses will be sharing in the film-goers’ joy given that some of them must have been wondering if they were ever going to see another mega-hit like this again. The industry has been beset by a string of recent big-budget flops, led by Disney’s live-action Snow White remake.
The latter failed in large part because of the House of Mouse’s determination to turn it into a woke tale of female empowerment with garish CGI dwarfs.
Thankfully, there’s no attempt at social engineering in A Minecraft Movie, just a lot of harmless silliness (with minimal plot) about a mismatched foursome in modern-day Idaho who are pulled through a mysterious portal into a Minecraft-like cubic wonderland called the Overworld. They must find a magical ‘earth crystal’ before a tribe of villainous pig-like creatures get to it first.
But despite the inevitable emphasis on fun, fun, fun in a film spin-off from a children’s video game, A Minecraft Movie actually has a rather dark genesis.
The game’s shy and reclusive Swedish creator, Markus Persson, was raised by his mother in Stockholm after his parents divorced when he was seven.
His troubled father introduced him to computing at an early age (Markus was programming by the time he was eight years old) but later went to prison for robbery.
Markus created the initial version of Minecraft in just a week. Dubbed ‘digital Lego’, the game’s emphasis on building rather than killing, not to mention its encouragement of players to engage in teamwork, led to it winning the approval of some psychologists and schools.
Persson, now 45, sold his share of the Minecraft business to Microsoft for $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) in 2014. However, having bought a $70 million mansion in Beverly Hills and sometimes spending more than $180,000 a night in Las Vegas nightclubs, Persson complained his riches had ruined his life and – despite his new celebrity friends – made him lonely and purposeless.
His troubles continued when Microsoft effectively declared him persona non grata after he made a string of controversial comments on feminism, race and transgender rights on X, which made him a hero among some Right-wingers.
Minecraft’s Xbox cover art, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Jack Black’s character
Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft and didn’t invite him to its tenth birthday party for the game.
Even if he’d been permitted, Persson wanted to have no involvement in the film, although he has said it turned out better than he thought ‘for a movie about a game with literally zero plot’.
The Minecraft film threw up further controversy when one of its original producers died by suicide in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Jill Messick had been the manager of actress Rose McGowan who claimed she was raped by the predatory Hollywood mogul in 1997.
After the allegations against Weinstein broke in 2017, McGowan claimed Messick had sided with Weinstein in exchange for a job at his company, leading to the producer being bullied and hounded online.
She took her own life in 2018, with her family insisting she’d actually been ‘the first person who stood up on Rose’s behalf’.
Meanwhile, the Minecraft film’s director, Jared Hess, says he’s been ‘laughing my brains out’ over the reception to his ‘goofy’ film.
‘I’m just so happy that people are finding joy in going back to cinemas and seeing things as a community,’ he said.
Cinema staff don’t seem to be nearly so delighted but, as they count the days to A Minecraft Movie ending its run, they can console themselves it could have been worse. If Persson had stuck with his initial name of RubyDung, they might be having to clear up something a lot more unpleasant than mountains of popcorn.
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