With A Minecraft Movie already the highest grossing film of 2025 and poised for another big weekend at the box office, Brock University professors are weighing in on the challenges of adapting video games for the big screen and expressions of fan identity.

Associate Professor of Game Studies Jason Hawreliak said for decades, movie executives have seen the popularity of video game franchises and tried to capitalize on them.

But according to Hawreliak, the Graduate Program Director of Brock’s Master of Arts in Game Studies program, most video game adaptations haven’t been very successful — save for a few exceptions, such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023.

“One of the problems is that a core feature of video games is their interactivity, which you can’t really duplicate in film. That’s especially tricky for something like Minecraft, which is all about exploration, creativity and building a world,” he said.

“It’s difficult to turn that openness into a two-hour, coherent narrative.”

Having said that, Hawreliak thinks the success of the Minecraft movie isn’t too surprising, even given the history of unsuccessful video game adaptations.

“Minecraft is among the most popular video games in history, and Jack Black has already established himself in this space by voicing Bowser in the 2023 Mario Bros. movie,” he said.

While Hawreliak wouldn’t call it a particularly strong script, movie producers have been able to trade on Minecraft‘s brand recognition.

“I do think they got some of the spirit of the game right,” he said. “Minecraft is still very popular, and a lot of young adults grew up playing it, so seeing that world on screen is fun for them.”

Derek Foster, Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, says crowd reaction to the film is only the most recent example of an upswing in participatory culture among audiences.

“As fandom becomes more mainstream, this type of audience behaviour is going to be indicative of the ways in which people engage with media, the ways in which we engage with each other as we consume media and the ways in which people increasingly find value in immersive media experiences,” said the audience studies expert.

According to Foster, audience members are not just consumers but users and producers who “actually help constitute the nature of an event” like a screening of the Minecraft film.

“The immersive experience is co-created by the fans and their interactions with the movie and with each other, going beyond their existence as fans into the performance of the fan identity,” he said.

Foster connects the current Minecraft movie phenomena with other recent examples of cultural immersion like the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, which invited fans to connect through collective identity practices.

But he notes that while there is a marked overall trend of fandom moving from subculture to more mainstream, visible formats, it has not yet lost its “connotation of excessiveness,” which may explain some of the finger-wagging at the cinema.

“Minecraft movie-goers playing ‘chicken jockey!’ may seem juvenile or even lawless from an outsider’s perspective,” he said. “But for insiders, for people who are part of Minecraft culture or community, it’s actually a form of cultural competency — they’re keeping their eyes open for the codes that they all recognize and then coming together and creating the spectacle.”

Photo credit: “Minecraft cosplayers” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.