Jack Black has accomplished a rare and impressive box office achievement with his three biggest franchise. After his breakout role in 2000’s High Fidelity, Jack Black went on to star in a number of movies, largely in the comedy genre. Some of his most notable movies from the 2000s include Shallow Hal, Nacho Libre, School of Rock, and The Holiday.
Over the course of his career, Jack Black has appeared in a number of movies that have either spawned franchises or been continuations of a pre-existing franchise. One of his most notable franchise roles is voicing the тιтle character Po in DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda movies.
Other franchise installments starring Black include I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Ice Age, 2005’s King Kong, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The NeverEnding Story III, The Muppets, Goosebumps, and Borderlands. However, his three biggest franchises share a box office record that none of his others have been able to match.
Jumanji, Minecraft, & Super Mario Bros. Are Jack Black’s Biggest Franchises
He Plays Major Characters In All Three
The star’s three biggest film franchises are Minecraft, Super Mario Bros., and Jumanji, two of which feature him as iconic pre-existing characters. The most recent of the three is Minecraft, which debuted with A Minecraft Movie in 2025. The Jack Black video game movie features the actor as the iconic character Steve, who originated in the game.
Super Mario Bros. is another video game franchise with recent provenance, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, in which Black voices the iconic villain Bowser, debuted in 2023. While there have been other live-action and animated projects adapted from the Mario games, the 2023 animated movie is a standalone and the first to be produced by Illumination.
Illumination is an animation studio known for the Despicable Me and Minions movies.
Black’s other biggest film franchise is the Jumanji movies. He joined Jumanji in its second installment, 2017’s Welcome to the Jungle, a standalone sequel about teenagers being trapped as characters in a jungle survival video game. Black portrayed one of these characters, scientist Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon, which was a role he reprised in the 2019 sequel The Next Level.
Every Entry In These Jack Black Franchises Have Made Over $800 Million
He Has Several Huge Hits Under His Belt
While The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the highest-grossing of Jack Black’s franchise installments (and of his career in general) with a whopping $1.361 billion gross, all four installments of this trio of his biggest franchises have grossed more than $800 million apiece. Below, see a breakdown of the movies’ box office performance:
тιтle |
Worldwide Box Office |
---|---|
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) |
$962.5 million |
Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) |
$801.7 million |
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) |
$1.361 billion |
A Minecraft Movie (2025) |
$954 million |
On top of this record, Black’s three biggest franchises each reached $900 million with the first installment in which he appears. These whopping grosses see the four movies in question making up nearly 40% of the total box office of Jack’s entire filmography, which has hit a cumulative $10.689 billion.
Jack Black’s Box Office Success Is Good News For These Franchises’ Futures
The Most Recent Updates Are Promising For Their Longevity
The fact that Jack Black is at the center of so many modern hits is good news for the franchises involved, as all three of them have new installments in various stages of development thanks to their initial installments’ theatrical success.
This includes a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was announced to be in development in November 2023, after the end of the writers strike. It was later announced that a follow-up Super Mario Bros. movie has been slated for release on April 3, 2026.
That same year will see the release of a new Jumanji movie, which is set to be the final installment in the Welcome to the Jungle trilogy and is currently scheduled to premiere on December 11, 2026.
The Welcome to the Jungle movies also star Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, and Nick Jonas alongside Jack Black.
Additionally, while the possible A Minecraft Movie 2 has not been officially greenlit, Warner Bros. executives Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy recently told ᴅᴇᴀᴅline that an announcement may be imminent. Ultimately, a follow-up seems inevitable, considering the fact that the Jack Black movie grossed nearly $1 billion against its reported budget of $150 million.
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Source(s): ᴅᴇᴀᴅline
Jack Black
- Birthdate
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August 28, 1969
- Birthplace
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Santa Monica, California, USA