Child Star: How Jack Black Became Every Eight Year Old’s Favourite Actor

A Minecraft Movie made a lot of money. This was always going to happen, although those of us over the age of 30 who don’t have kids may still be perturbed by its grand success. The big-screen adaptation of the beloved video game earned over $344 million in its opening weekend, more than doubling its budget with ease, and it’s already the fourth highest-grossing movie of 2025 so far (sorry, Snow White.) Industry experts have grumbled about the seeming lack of family-friendly movies at the box office, the kinds of G-rated fare that anyone of any age could go to see that weren’t dependent on superheroes or the House of Mouse. Well, Minecraft certainly delivered, but so did its leading man, Mr. Jack Black.

Over the past decade or so, Black has largely moved into being the leading man in these kinds of shiny happy kids’ movies. He was R.L. Stine in Goosebumps and Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. He’s the best part in the Jumanji reboot and its sequel. The Kung Fu Panda franchise remains a major box office player. And now he’s Steve, who my cousin’s seven-year-old son has reassured me is a very big deal. All of this has paid off marvellously for Black’s box office clout, and it’s created something we’re so bereft of in 2025: a proper A-List star, albeit one for children.

It shouldn’t be all that surprising, given that Black’s breakout role was in a kids’ film. School of Rock, directed by Richard Linklater and written by Mike White, was Jack’s way of breaking down the walls, Kool-Aid Man style, and showing what made him so charismatic as a performer. Sure, it was already on show in High Fidelity, but being Dewey Finn, the slacker wannabe rocker who fakes his way into a substitute teacher gig, was a whole new level. He was a loser but a loveable one, a guy who does something kind of reprehensible but also has a genuine connection with the kids who he shapes into being the coolest tween rock band on the planet. Black has always been a great on-screen dad/uncle/irresponsible male role model, in part because he has great rapport with kids. There’s a lot of big kid energy in Black that he utilizes for such roles, but also a real emotional core. When he tells one girl to feel positive in herself and ignore the haters, you buy it.

It’s almost a rite of passage for a comedic actor to do a kids’ movie where they’re embroiled in wacky shenanigans, and the children show them how it’s done. Sometimes it works, but there are plenty of examples where it doesn’t. Chevy Chase couldn’t pull it off. Black can because he doesn’t see himself as above the project or the children. Black became an auxiliary member of the Frat Pack, the loosely connected group of bro-ey comedy stars who could headline a comedy and make $100 million at the box office, because he could keep up with the profane and puerile. A lot of those skills worked great with kids’ movies, even toned down. He could do what Adam Sandler can but was far less likely to be drowning in unearned sentimentality by the conclusion.

There’s also just the sheer unbridled confidence of Black’s persona. He’s brash, takes up a lot of space, is loud and random, and doesn’t apologize for it. He thinks he’s awesome so of course kids do too. I once wrote that Chris Pratt wants what Jack Black has, and I stand by it. Where Pratt, and many men, fail is in confusing arrogance for confidence. Black never reads as smarmy. Kids have great BS meters and would sniff that out in a second. It also makes him, it must be said, irresistible to women (more Jack Black rom-coms, please.)

It’s a shame that a lot of his best performances simply don’t get seen, as with films like Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, a biopic by Gus Van Sant where he is heart-achingly good. But you can’t blame him for going where the money is. It wasn’t that long ago that Black was close to being written off as a has-been. Films like Gulliver’s Travels and Year One had people wondering what they liked about him in the first place. As the Frat Pack lost its power and was replaced by the Apatow machine, Black had to change course on his career, and hey, these Kung Fu Panda films seem to do well. Why not lean in, with a YouTube channel and appearances on Good Mythical Morning? And he’s not phoning it in in this current phase of his career. Black commits, and often we get great work out of it. See the Jumanji movies, where he plays a teenage girl stuck in a fat middle-aged dude’s body and avoids all cliché and lazy misogyny.

Would I like Black to go back to making stuff like Margot at the Wedding and The D-Train? Sure. I think his work in Bernie is stellar and would have earned any other actor an Oscar nomination. He’s certainly capable of immense pathos, and it’s invariably fun to see him explore the inherent darkness of being the jovial fat guy who’s always on. Maybe Richard Linklater can find him another great part where he gets to be a Capital A-Actor and not Jack Black (registered trademark). But leaning in to being Bowser and Steve and Po has paid off so massively that I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t, as disappointing as that’d be to me personally. Maybe he’ll do his U-turn into prestige in a couple of years, Dwayne Johnson-style. For now, he has zombies to kill. That’s a Minecraft thing, right?