Building A Box Office Hit

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Happy post-Tax Day, Future Party. Now that we’ve all survived another year of collective financial trauma (our cortisol levels are still riding high), treat yourself to that overpriced latte — you deserve it. Heck, make it a networking thing and write it off next year. Just remember to keep the receipt.

DAILY TOP TRENDS

Why A Minecraft Movie Surprised Box Office Forecasters

A Minecraft Movie blasted past industry expectations with a $160 million box-office debut in just the US and Canada, despite projections that it would make around $65 million (a big win in and of itself). It’s another surprise in recent years that has Hollywood studios and media analysts wondering why the typically reliable box-office forecasting has gotten so off the mark.

The Big Picture: Studios rely on box-office forecasting to determine how to modulate their marketing campaigns in the run-up to a movie’s release, communicate expectations to Wall Street, and prepare for demand (or lack thereof). When tracking is off, an unpredictable industry only gets more unpredictable… which means some studios may push for updated forms of box-office tracking in the digital age.

Behind the Scenes: Warner Bros. had no idea the hit it built with Minecraft.

• Just before the movie’s release, some analysts started to increase their projection to somewhere between $85 million and $100 million, thinking they were adequately accounting for the hype.

• But when the movie was released, no one expected the massive turnout from Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids, who had grown up with the video game and were very eager to be part of the wild “chicken jockey” theater experience.

• And while good word-of-mouth is counted on to keep grosses high in a film’s second week, the speed of the internet (and many memes) means the “water-cooler moment” now happens in hours, not days. People flocked to the theaters immediately.

• To date, A Minecraft Movie has made over $552 million globally — making it the highest-grossing Hollywood movie of 2025.

Our Forecast: Top box-office tracking services like NRG and The Quorum develop their forecasts by polling hundreds of moviegoers several times a week starting about a month before a movie’s release, then comparing the data to past similar films. While the services are pretty accurate most of the time, they’ve been way off when it comes to runaway hits, especially ones catering to teens or women — Inside Out 2, Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and It Ends With Us, for example. David Herrin, founder of The Quorum, even told Bloomberg, “We are not good at tracking family films.”

To get around this issue, we wouldn’t be surprised if tracking services start polling people inside game platforms — you know, the places where kids hang out.

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Hugging Face Wants To Democratize Robots

AI-model platform Hugging Face has acquired robotics startup Pollen Robotics and plans on selling the robot and making its code open-source.

Why It Hits: Despite the many security risks, open-sourcing AI has become popular, even among giant firms. Meta does it. DeepSeek upped the ante. And, now, OpenAI is set to release an open-source model. By putting open-source capabilities in robotics, anyone will be able to customize humanoid robots… for better or worse.

Behind the Code: Pollen Robotics, which is best known for the two-armed, humanoid bot Reachy 2, will soon be available to everyone in more ways than one.

• By making Pollen’s code open-source, developers and engineers would be able to manipulate the code and build on its capabilities freely.

• They’ll also have access to design blueprints and can even 3D-print spare or custom parts.

• Eventually, that could lead to people having their own version of Reachy 2 in their homes.

The Future: Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue says the open-sourcing of Pollen’s code is needed to reach a higher “level of trust and transparency” than “something I chat with on my laptop.” Pollen CEO Matthieu Lapeyre piggybacks off that when he says Hugging Face’s plan will allow for the democratization of building humanoid robots, which is a sector currently dominated by companies like Figure, Agility, and Tesla.

So, it’s a classic “keep the big players at bay by giving everyone the power to get under the hood of cutting-edge tech” play. We hope people tinker responsibly.

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DEEP DIVES

• Watch: Forbes finds out how small energy startup Crusoe Energy scored the contract to build data centers for Project Stargate.

• Read: Fast Company profiles Anirudh Rao — a 12-year-old inventor who’s devised a new way to track tornadoes using drones.

• Explore: Beats + Bytes, the newsletter from the music-focused Nue Agency, released a detailed trends report on the intersection of music, tech, and marketing.

74.5% of you voted No in yesterday’s poll: Have you bought new clothes specifically for going back to the office?

“I worked in an office in the ‘before times,’ so I already had plenty of suits and business-casual attire. Plus, the white-collar world (especially creative industries) has really embraced athleisure and comfortable clothing as the norm.”

“The joys of retirement are wrapped in yoga pants and hoodies.”

“I’m fully remote, so there’s no need.”

“COVID didn’t impact me, but I did go from a medical position to a career placement. I feel like my life changes every 10 years, and I’m constantly going back and forth between business attire and casual clothes. I’ve begun to learn to keep a neutral collection of both — pieces that can be dressed up or down and a few that are more specific.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

🦖 Toho, the Japanese studio behind the long-running Godzilla franchise, is investing $830 million to expand internationally.

🍿 The British Film Institute is screening the original cut of Star Wars in June — the first time it’s been shown since December 1978.

🎢 MrBeast wants to turn Beast Industries into The Walt Disney Company of YouTube.

→ Technology

😧 As Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in the FTC’s antitrust trial against Meta, it was revealed that he’s really nervous about Facebook losing relevance.

🤖 Anthropic is close to rolling out a voice-enabled version of its Claude chatbot.

🤯 OpenAI is planning to launch an X-like social media platform. We didn’t have that one on the bingo card.

→ Fashion / E-commerce

👜 Hermès accomplished the rare feat of surpassing LVMH as the most valuable luxury company in the world, as the latter’s stock continued to fall.

👕 Jean Paul Gaultier is getting back into ready-to-wear fashion and has tapped Duran Lantink as creative director to make it happen.

🇺🇸 For something to be designated “Made in the USA,” it doesn’t have to be entirely made in the USA.