Kids sure love video game movies

“A Minecraft Movie” isn’t just a hit — after three weekends in theaters, the film is estimated to have grossed $344 million domestically and $720 million worldwide. That makes it the biggest movie of an admittedly underwhelming year at the box office (so far), and the second biggest video game movie of all time. Coming two years after the massive success of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.36 billion worldwide), and amidst the continued popularity of “Sonic the Hedgehog” films, it’s probably safe to say Hollywood’s video game adaptation curse has been broken. In fact, one anonymous studio executive told the Financial Times that video games have “replaced comic books as the next frontier of IP to be explored.” And just as superhero movies generally became more faithful to their source material during the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this executive said that the key to a successful video game movie is “fan service” — i.e., staying true to “the characters and the milieu of the ... Read full article.