With an explosion in presales and interest, Warner Bros./Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie” is suddenly looking like a box office drought buster. The film earned $10.5 million in Thursday previews, setting a new record for video game adaptations and topping the $10.3 million preview total of “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”

That Blumhouse film went on to an $80 million domestic opening weekend in October 2023 driven by strong turnout from Gen Z fans of the indie horror game series. And while that film was a PG-13 horror movie, “Minecraft” is a PG family film released in the heart of the spring break period.

Earlier this week, projections for “Minecraft” were set at $70 million with a strong upside for $80 million-plus. In the past 48 hours, those projections have rapidly risen amid late presales and strong overseas opening day totals, and now the film is expected to earn a $100 million-plus domestic start and could clear that by a considerable margin.

More to come…

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