Actor and musician Jack Black is closing out an already terrible summer with the publicity launch of what looks like another humiliating box office flop.
Minecraft, yet another movie based on a popular video game, does not hit theaters until April, but the release of the trailer is already a public relations disaster. As of this writing, the Warner Bros. wide release has accumulated nearly twice as many YouTube downvotes as upvotes — 965,000 to 534,000 — and the trailer… The first word that comes to mind is dreadful:
The animation looks like something you’d see on a 1996, low-budget cartoon on some off-brand cable network like KidsTV 6.
I’m not the only one saying so. Forbes spent seven paragraphs trashing the trailer.
“What I can’t understand is why anyone would make such an unforced error,” writes Forbes. “An animated Minecraft movie that actually looked more like the game … makes far more sense than this soulless, low-effort abomination. I am aghast.”
The YouTube commenters are equally aghast:
- My expectations were low. They should’ve been lower.
- I expect nothing and yet somehow I’m still disappointed.
- How brave of Warner Bros. leaving the comment section open.
- Dear movie companies, if you don’t like having money, you could always just send it to me.
- Can we go back in time when movies coming out were good?
- Somewhere out there, there is a timeline with a good Minecraft movie. We are not in that timeline.
- Borderlands movie: Damn I flopped so hard. Minecraft movie: Hold my beer.
Of course, Borderlands, one of the biggest flops of the summer, is another video game adaptation starring … Jack Black.
Apparently, Hollywood believes that since Jack Black co-starred in two successful Jumanji movies — which are kinda based on a game — if they add him to other movies based on games, the magic can only come along with him.
Borderlands, however, was the least of Jack Black’s problems this summer. Back in July, after his Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass took the stage in Australia and openly wished that the next assassin who takes aim at former President Trump to not miss, the tour and the band collapsed into a pile of scandal. It sure didn’t help that after Gass made his comments, Black laughed.
The year must have looked awfully rosy for Black back in March when his King Fu Panda 4 went on to gross $550 million worldwide. Then it all went sideways. Much of it self-inflicted. Bad choices all around.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.