This was certainly a week of economic uncertainty and the so-called experts making bad calls. That applied to the global economy in a number of areas but also to the tracking services who had no bead on just how well one film at the box office was going to do this weekend, where a sigh of relief could be heard from theaters everywhere. It may be the sigh of IP, but any port in a storm when the general sense is that nobody is going to the movies. Enter a big ol’ video game-inspired family film into the mix and see how they flock. While there have been tempered expectations as to just how well the long-delayed tentpole would perform, rising pre-sales kept upping the projections, and despite all the doom and gloom again, we could be looking at the third time this year a month has bested its 2024 counterpart.
King of the Crop: A Minecraft Movie Strikes Gold with Best Opening of the Year
Borderlands it certainly is not. But even with growing Fandango sales leading up to its release, nobody had A Minecraft Movie besting the opening of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. $157 million not just one-upped Mario’s top video game adaptation score of $146.3 million, but it is most certainly the best opening of the year, and it would have been the second-best opening in 2023, the third-best opening of 2024, and the sixth-best since the pandemic. By next weekend it will have passed Captain America: Brave New World’s $200 million gross, which it has worked so hard over the past eight weekends to achieve (and still isn’t quite there). The next question is just how high the film with the third-best opening in April and the 25th-best opening ever will climb.
$300 million would be the insanely lowball projection for Minecraft, and that would put it with the word-of-mouth of your Twilight films. $330-343 million would be in league with non-WOM-friendly comic book films (Spider-Man 3, Batman v Superman, Thor: Love and Thunder). We could do this all day, but here’s a fact that will make everyone at Warner Bros. happy: Every PG-rated film to open over $130 million has grossed over $400 million. So let’s start there. This is pretty much the family film of choice until Lilo & Stitch opens over Memorial Day weekend, and with $301 million already in the bank worldwide, this is going to be one of the biggest hits of the year and the multi-million boost to the box office that should begin to subdue the doomsayers.
Tales of the top 10: Captain America Eyes $200 Million, Snow White Keeps Falling
Statham held off Jesus this weekend. Again, actually. A Working Man dropped 53% to $7.2 million, bringing its 10-day total to $27.8 million. Sharks and sidekicking with Melissa McCarthy aside, its not a bad total for the action star. The Beekeeper had $31.2 million in that frame and Transporter 2 had $30.3 million. A Working Man’s total is better than anything in his headlining career. Transporter 2 also had a $7.3 million second weekend and was on its way to $43 million. A landing close to $40 million will be OK for the $40 million Working Man as long as its $25 million international haul continues to get a boost to bring its global total close to nine digits.
Last week The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 1 made $11.7 million. This past weekend, The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 2 hit theaters with $6.7 million. Part 1 fell back to seventh place with $1.87 million and has now grossed more than any of The Chosen events with $17.9 million. Paper Air Media’s version of The Last Supper opened three weeks ago and has made $6.4 million.
The journey from a legendary cinematic achievement in 1937 to an outright disaster in 2025 is truly something for Disney’s Snow White. Even if opinions vary wildly on why the live-action version has failed so spectacularly, here’s a fact about the numbers not in dispute: You have to go back to 1994 with Pulp Fiction to find a film that opened wide in its first weekend, grossed less than $6 million in its third weekend and still end up grossing $100 million. It took Pulp a full run through 25 weeks to even achieve that milestone, too. Snow White made $6.09 million this weekend for a domestic total of $77.4 million. It’s not getting there. Globally the $270 million production is at just $168 million and is on track to become the biggest failure in the history of Walt Disney.
Horror fans still haven’t found their movie to fully embrace this year. The Woman in the Yard made $4.5 million in its second weekend. That brings its 10-day total to $16.6 million. At the very least it should surpass Wolf Man’s total for Blumhouse, but even its smaller budget doesn’t guarantee a profit at this point. Same for Death of a Unicorn, which is up to $10.7 million after a $2.6 million second weekend. Trey Edwards Shults’ apocalyptic thriller, It Comes at Night, opened to $5.9 million for A24 back in 2017, and with a $2.6 million second frame, it ended up grossing just $13.9 million. Unicorn is headed between just $13-14 million. (Shults’ Hurry Up Tomorrow with Jenna Ortega and The Weeknd opens May 16.)
Rounding out the top 10, we have the co-directorial feature debut of Finn Wolfhard, Hell of a Summer, which was scheduled for an Apr. 18 release and moved up in the calendar with little fanfare or outreach from Neon, and opened to $1.75 million. The slasher horror/comedy debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in 2023. The Friend with Naomi Watts, Bill Murray, and Bing the Great Dane expanded from its two theaters last week where it grossed $67,629 into 1,237 theaters where it made $1.6 million. Captain America: Brave New World made $1.39 million and is indeed on the verge of passing $200 million domestic with $199.1 million. That’s a minor victory for a film that is still going down as a theatrical loss (though pennies compared to Snow White) and in the bottom 10 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe grosses.
Beyond the Top 10: Black Bag Drops to No. 11
Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag made $950,000 in weekend four and has grossed $20.6 million domestic. Last weekend’s re-release of Princess Mononoke by GKids made $617,000 for a new total of $5.9 million. The Penguin Lessons with Steve Coogan made $444,000 for a total of $2.2 million. Anna Fleck and Ryan Boden’s anthology film Freaky Tales, which debuted at Sundance in 2024, opened to just $400,000 in 393 theaters from Lionsgate. The tale of the infamous Press Your Luck winner, The Luckiest Man In America with Paul Walter Hauser, opened in 659 theaters from IFC but only made $282,000. In 1984 the contestant he plays, Michael Larson, made $110,237 on the game show. That would be about $338,543 in 2025, more than what the movie made this weekend.
On the Vine: Thrillers Galore with Warfare, Drop, and The Amateur
A trio of studio releases hit theaters next week. Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza’s Warfare currently leads the pack with critics. The 24-hour battle drama based on real events is being released by A24. Not far behind is the latest from director Christopher Landon and Blumhouse Productions. Drop premiered at SXSW to solid reviews and is being released by Universal. Next up is James Hawes’ The Amateur with Rami Malek. The revenge thriller has not received the go-ahead for reviews yet, and Fox hopes audiences are still in the mood for some action.
Full List of Box Office Results: April 4-6, 2025
- A Minecraft Movie – $157 million ($157 million total)
- A Working Man – $7.2 million ($27.8 million total)
- The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 2 – $6.7 million ($6.7 million total)
- Snow White – $6 million ($77.4 million total)
- The Woman in the Yard – $4.5 million ($16.6 million total)
- Death of a Unicorn – $2.6 million ($10.7 million total)
- The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 1 – $1.87 million ($17.9 million total)
- Hell of a Summer – $1.75 million ($1.75 million total)
- The Friend – $1.62 million ($1.7 million total)
- Captain America: Brave New World – $1.39 million ($199 million total)
Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast. [box office figures via Box Office Mojo]
Thumbnail image by ©Warner Bros.
On an Apple device? Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Apple News.