The Hollywood film ‘Minecraft Movie’, which is enjoying a ‘whirlwind’ of popularity in North America, will land in domestic theaters on the 26th.In line with this, tension is also growing for Korean films that are scheduled to be released around the same time.

‘The Minecraft Movie’, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, is a blockbuster film based on the 2011 game ‘Minecraft’, which became the ‘best-selling video game of all time’.It depicts the adventures of the main characters who are sucked into the ‘Overworld’ where everything turns into squares.

Thanks to the popularity of the original game, the movie opened in North America and Europe on the 4th, and set a new record for the highest opening for a game-based movie in history by earning $157 million in just three days, and in just two weeks, it recorded $550.6 million in worldwide revenue, beating ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ to become the highest-grossing global movie of the year.

Especially in North America, it has become a trend for audiences to cheer and throw popcorn at scenes where certain characters appear, further fueling the popularity of the movie.Videos of such audiences are spreading like memes online.

Foreign media outlets such as Variety predicted that, riding on this frenzied atmosphere, ‘Minecraft Movie’ would not only become the first movie to hit $1 billion this year, but would also surpass ‘Super Mario Bros.’ ($1.36199 billion), the highest-grossing game of all time.

The North American fever quickly spread to Korea through SNS, and Warner Bros.Korea decided to release ‘Minecraft Movie’ in theaters four days earlier than originally scheduled for release on the 30th, on Saturday, the 26th.This is the first case of a Hollywood film being officially released on a Saturday since the practice of Saturday releases disappeared in the 2000s.They are determined to raise the ‘opening score’, which has a decisive influence on word of mouth, by starting with the weekend when more viewers gather than on weekdays.

Meanwhile, amid growing tension over the upcoming releases of Korean films such as ‘Breakthrough’, ‘Holy Night: Demon Hunters’, and ‘Virus’, some are predicting that ‘Minecraft Movie’ will have a hard time gaining as much popularity in Korea as it does in North America.In fact, there is a case where ‘Super Mario Bros.’ , which earned over $1 billion and was the highest-grossing film in North America in 2023, only attracted 2.39 million viewers in Korea.


Reporter Seungmi smlee@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.