Mirror Mirror On the Wall, Who’s the Fairest Film of All?

Hint: It ain’t the one with the mirror on the wall. Not by a long shot. 

That film didn’t even score a bronze this weekend. 

First, though, let’s focus the film that did take the gold medal. The much-anticipated A Minecraft Movie expertly leveraged its gamer IP into a blockbuster opening weekend. The estimated gross went to $157 million in the US, with global receipts topping $300 million. It even managed to outscore Disney’s flop Snow White with both critics and audiences, and gave Hollywood a much-needed boost in 2025:

“A Minecraft Movie” opened to an estimated $301 million worldwide, delivering a much-needed hit to Hollywood after a dismal start to the year at the box office.

The Warner Bros. Discovery WBD 1.05%increase; green up pointing triangle movie based on a Microsoft videogame grossed $157 million in the U.S. and Canada, the strongest domestic opening of the year and the biggest since Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” last July. “Minecraft” pulled in another $144 million overseas.

The adaptation of the globally popular videogame topped expectations and is the latest proof that well-known intellectual property makes it much easier to draw audiences to theaters.

In comparison, Snow White has only grossed $77.4 million and change at the domestic box office after three weeks in theaters. It fell to fourth place this weekend, behind A Working Man and The Chosen: Last Supper Part 2. After falling off 66% in its second weekend, Snow White dropped another 57.5% this most recent weekend, with an anemic $1,623 per screen. The Chosen nearly doubled that in its opening three days despite its upcoming release to streaming, and the Jason Statham action film outpaced it with $2,230 per screen. 

The news isn’t much better overseas, either. After three weeks, Snow White has only grossed $90 million, putting its total gross at less than $170 million. It’s not even scoring in the market where Disney brown-noses most; it has only grossed $1.2 million in China in three weeks. The film cost a reported $250 million to make, which is likely a low estimate, and does not include distribution and advertising costs. Factor into the mix that theaters take a healthy bite of the gross for themselves, and Disney appears to be on track to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on their turkey. 

Last week, I offered a joke on Twitter: What’s the difference between The Little Mermaid and Snow White? A: Legs! Ariel’s got legs, man! Snow White clearly does not, and now that A Minecraft Movie has hit the screens, it’s not likely to develop them either:

“Minecraft” is likely to remain No. 1 at the box office for a few weeks. The biggest coming films in April are Disney’s “The Amateur,” a thriller based on a little-known book, and Warner’s “Sinners,” an original horror movie set in the early days of blues music starring Michael B. Jordan. “Sinners” is one of Abdy and De Luca’s risker bets of the year.

Many in Hollywood are hoping the summer will make up for the rough first several months of the year, with potential hits including new entries in the Mission: Impossible and Jurassic World series and a live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch.”

Ahem. Do we really want to assume that Disney will get a hit from another of its live-action remakes at this point? Granted, the new version of Lilo & Stitch won’t be encumbered by a bizarre and hostile star actively insulting its potential audience and bad-mouthing the source material. However, we haven’t seen much evidence from Disney that they can effectively layer CGI characters and environments onto live-action films yet, nor that their writing teams can do anything other than recycle clichés and woke didactics. Rachel Zegler isn’t the only thing wrong with Snow White, after all. 

In fairness, the critics don’t seem terribly enamored with A Minecraft Movie on those points either. A few have pointedly noted a curious similarity between this movie and The Wizard of Oz, with a heaping helping of borrowing from other sources, too. Audiences don’t seem to mind too much, at least not yet; Rotten Tomatoes has its verified-audience rating at 87%, still above Snow White’s 73%, which may just prove that audiences sometimes enjoy films for entertainment value alone. 

Christian Toto appreciates the effort and the entertainment, with some reservations:

What’s simple and streamlined at home is complicated to the Nth degree on screen. Stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa guide newbies and rabid fans alike through the digital haze. Their distinct personas make the goofier bits go down easily.

They have their hands full on that front. “A Minecraft Movie” is silly on steroids, a key reason it’s hard to get mad at its fractured storytelling.

The Critical Drinker is less impressed (NSFW, language):

The real lesson here is that a massive audience had been waiting for family entertainment that focuses on entertaining. Even a somewhat flawed vehicle like A Minecraft Movie (with its bizarrely generic title, which sounds more like a working concept) was able to seize on that demand from audiences. And that prompts the real question of why and how Disney missed that opportunity with its legendary IP and built-in audiences.