An excerpt from my script review for A Minecraft Movie which will be available 02/24/26:
1.) Marketability of the Idea
Minecraft.
My kids played it. You or your kids probably played it.
I tried playing it with my son once, only to die the first night and lose all my stuff.
Survival games are not for me.
But here’s the issue with things like Minecraft…it could be a fad, and Hollywood movies take a while to make, at least until AI gets it done…speaking of which…
Hollywood is rightfully pissed about that video, but sadly, that’s where we’re headed folks.
Unions can bitch all they want, but the future is coming, and everyone that makes a living in the movie industry should be nervous, because even if AI doesn’t replace everyone, my bet is that a good chunk will become obsolete.
It’s coming folks…
Anyway, chasing a fad…so take my kids as an example…
The boy moved on from Minecraft to other more realistic survival games, like Ark or Rust.
Every now and then he comes back to Minecraft when he wants to create freestyle, like a castle or a cathedral, but for the most part he’s moved on.
The middlest…well she jumps all over the place, but has never come back to Minecraft. Both girls are on TikTok too much for my liking (speaking of stupid AI generated videos), but after Minecraft came Roblox, which, I guess, is the open source successor to the former. Right now she’s playing some FIFA style game on there where she’s the goalkeeper, something she doesn’t get to do in real life.
(I’m not thrilled with Roblox either, though in all honesty.)
Then the littlest…she moved on from Minecraft, which she only played because the other two did, to TikTok as mentioned above, but what she’s really into is watching horror game play throughs on YouTube. Her favorite being Sean on Jacksepticeye.
Admittedly I never understood the enjoyment of watching other people play video games when you could just play them yourself.
Then during Covid, I think, we watched Sean’s videos as a family while we made dinner.
I now kinda get it.
First, he and other YouTubers, are pretty entertaining while they play. Second, they’re playing games I’ve never heard of, let alone have the time or desire to play.
Anyway, that’s where my three are at currently.
So what’s my point?
Beware of fads, especially when you’re undertaking a multimillion dollar project based on one.
Maybe this is a better example…
Stainless steel, insulated water bottles.
(Stick with me, and I hope I’m getting this all right…)
This one deals with the boss and both girls.
First came Hydro Flask.
It was an insulated water bottle with a little screw top. It kept ice water cold pretty much all day, and the girls saw them somewhere on social media so naturally all three had to have them.
They’re overpriced double wall, vacuum sealed bottles that, at the time, you were paying for the little spread eagle person logo on the bottle.
To me, it was stupid to have to unscrew the cap each time you wanted a drink. I tried buying non brand bottles of a similar make that were even more convenient, but the girls wouldn’t use them.
(The boy did, cause like me, he didn’t give a shit about a brand, just needed something that worked.)
Second came Stanleys.
You’ve probably seen them. They look like oversized metal mugs with a little blocky (Minecraftesque?) lion on it or something.
They were overpriced like the Hydro Flask models, but most of these came with a sturdy plastic straw and the bottom portion could fit in “most” car cup holders.
Lastly, and what we’re using now but not sure for how long, is the Owala water bottles.
The “best” of both worlds, in that via the flip top lid, you can sip when you want to sip, or take giant gulps when doing things like working out or playing sports.
Now I would still never buy one for myself, but I appreciate the engineering behind this one.
The overall point I’m trying to make, circling back to the marketability aspect of a fad, is that I can remember early on when the girls moved on to Owalas…
I was walking through Target, and they had an aisle end cap dedicated entirely to Stanley mugs and bottles, all at like $30-40 each.
Target had gone all in on the Stanley brand.
Unfortunately they had missed the boat because, via social media, that wasn’t popular anymore and the targeted demographic had moved on.
A few weeks later, it was on the “less busy” side of that particular aisle and Target was running a “sale” with Stanleys being $20-25.
No clue if they ever got rid of them all, and at how bad a loss.
And this is just a mug or bottle…imagine sinking millions of dollars on a single idea that is popular now, but given the short attention spans, may not be in a few years when your project finally hits theaters.
Imagine if Hollywood, and I wouldn’t put it past them, based a project on Hydro Flasks two years ago, with a spring 2026 release date…not the gamble I’d make.
A Minecraft Movie Box Office Stats
(It looks like this fad paid off.)
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