Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Lisa Laman | Film | October 21, 2025
We don’t have a lot of movie stars anymore. The few American actors who can reliably bring in big box office numbers just based on their names are Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sandra Bullock … and Jack Black. A Minecraft Movie this year solidified Black as one of the last movie stars in existence. While Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell have retreated into Netflix and Hulu comedies, Black is still anchoring big-screen projects and making a lot of money.
Sure, Minecraft is a big brand name that would’ve drawn in a lot of moviegoers under any circumstance. However, Black announcing phrases like “CHICKEN JOCKEY!!” and “ENDER PEARL” were a key part of the film’s marketing campaign and meme status. He was critical in shaping the film’s reception, especially after starring in other video game-themed hits like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the two recent Jumanji installments. These projects are all playing off a media personality Black’s cultivated over 40 years as a performer.
However, our current era of Jack Black cinema is riding a comeback wave that began ten years ago this month with a Halloween-themed family comedy named Goosebumps. In this R.L. Stine adaptation, the Rosetta Stone for subsequent Black hits was established … even if audiences didn’t know it at the time.
Jack Black Needed a Comeback in 2015…And Got One
Today, he’s one of the few remaining movie stars in American cinema. In the early 2010s, though, Black’s career was in a more precarious place. 2010’s Gulliver’s Travels was a costly box office dud that, on paper, seemed to be right in Black’s wheelhouse. After all, it was a family-skewing yufkest launched at Christmas. However, despite seeming like a direct pastiche of Nacho Libre and School of Rock, it became one of his lowest-grossing star vehicles up to that point. People had liked Black in scrappy, down-to-earth comedies. Tossing lots of costly CGI and robot battles on top of that cinematic mold didn’t resonate with his fanbase.
2009’s Year One also cratering didn’t help his standing. Suddenly, Black stopped anchoring major studio comedies for a few years. In 2012, he delivered one of his best performances in Richard Linklater’s excellent Bernie, but it never got the proper U.S. theatrical distribution it needed to really break out. His 2015 indie film The D Train, meanwhile, went nowhere. Save for a delightful cameo in The Muppets, the early 2010s were not ideal for Black.
In June 2015, Black headlined the HBO political comedy The Brink with Tim Robbins. A now long-forgotten endeavor, The Brink didn’t have much of a ripple effect in its ten-episode run and eventually had its second season renewal reversed. That would’ve been a devastating blow to Black, a sign that neither prestige television nor big screen comedies wanted him. Luckily, that reversal came 12 days into the theatrical run of his first big box office hit in years…Goosebumps.
Goosebumps Established a Cinematic Mold Jack Black Would Smartly Adhere To
It’s ironic Black would get cast in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in summer 2016 since Goosebumps (which, like Jumanji, hailed from Sony/Columbia Pictures) took many cues from the original Jumanji. This movie saw a couple of teenagers sneaking into R.L. Stine’s (Black) house and opening a book containing various monsters from his Goosebumps books. Now, beasts like an Abominable Snowman and a gigantic praying mantis are rampaging across a small American town, just like rhinos and monkeys previously laid waste to a suburban domicile in Jumanji.
Black is amusing in Goosebumps, particularly since his energetic persona is quite different from the usual demeanor Hollywood grants middle-aged author characters in movies. Black’s Stine still works as a cromulent authority figure foil to teenage protagonists Zach Cooper (Dylan Minette), Champ (Ryan Lee), and Hannah Fairchild (Odeya Rush). However, Black’s palpable gusto in his performance ensures he doesn’t just fade into the background once the teenage melodrama or CG monsters show up.
One might understandably wonder, though, why Black was so entrancing to audiences in Goosebumps when seeing him interact with digital tableaus and creations in Gulliver’s Travels (which shares a director with Goosebumps, Rob Letterman) resulted in a box office bomb. The key difference between the two projects is that Goosebumps is set in Madison, Delaware, instead of the distant, Victorian-era island society of Lilliput. Audiences didn’t mind more VFX in a Jack Black comedy so long as it involved discernible reality.
There’s also the fact that Black in Gulliver’s Travels was often the big VFX attraction, since he was the giant towering over fleets of ships or his miniature co-stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt. That’s not what audiences want from Black. He’s the scrappy unemployed dude who has to lie his way through being a teacher, a portly panda proving he can be a kung fu master, or an orphanage cook living a secret double-life as a wrestler. Having Black play an author suddenly overwhelmed by his own creations fit perfectly into that underdog mold.
Jack Black + Nostalgia = Big Box Office
Black would cling to that underdog mold for his next decade of acting gigs. In the two Jumanji movies, he portrayed video game avatar Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon, inhabited by the souls of various teenagers who’re totally unprepared to exist in this video game body. His warlock mentor in The House with a Clock in Its Walls is always getting upended by unexpected supernatural occurrences like pumpkin goo. Exceptions like Bowser in Mario or Steve in Minecraft compensated for the lack of an underdog quality with the novelty of Black playing famous video game characters.
Something else Black kept from Goosebumps? Knowing what kind of nostalgia to mine. Gulliver’s Travels was based on 1726 writing from Jonathan Swift. 2011’s barely marketed flop The Big Year was largely sold as an original film. With Goosebumps, though, Black began embracing movie adaptations of properties that folks under 30 would be familiar with. These souls would either be nostalgic for the property in question (Jumanji, Goosebumps) or stoked to see their current favorite video game (Mario, Minecraft) on the big screen. After five years in the cinematic wilderness, Black found a recipe for box office success.
Doing his usual comedic shtick while rubbing shoulders with evil ventriloquist dummies, zombie pig warriors, and Jumanji critters has clearly worked out well for Black. It’s also a process that has constantly scored Black immense and universal praise. His work in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is genuinely inspired, while several critics praised him for delivering a better-than-needed performance in Goosebumps. They’re not my cup of tea, but his singing of ‘Peaches’ in The Super Mario Bros. Movie and various Minecraft Movie line deliveries also struck a profound chord with many moviegoers.
Black’s resurgence has largely been devoid of despised turns* despite him taking on so many franchise roles. Sticking to the Goosebumps mold hasn’t ensured Black’s showed up in the most unexpected of places, but it’s served him well. In this 2015 title, like in many of his subsequent star roles, he was highly amusing, demonstrating a proclivity for maintaining his star persona while sharing the stage with fictional creations meaningful to a new generation of moviegoers. Black didn’t need to be the centerpiece of these enterprises. The teenage Goosebumps leads, Jason Momoa, Dwayne Johnson, or entirely digital characters can take precedence.
Maybe that’s the secret to Black’s Goosebumps-induced success. Other 50+ year-old movie stars like Kevin Costner try to force 2025 audiences to like what was popular in 1990. Black, meanwhile, has no issue anchoring movies starring worlds and characters (like the Goosebumps monsters or Minecraft denizens) that have never hit the big screen before. Jared Leto wants to orient the entire Tron franchise around him while Black is all too happy to just breathlessly announce “FLINT AND STEEL!” at the sight of any recognizable Minecraft landmarks. These stories belong to a new wave of audiences who are delighted to see the familiar cinematic face of Jack Black in the mix. Who knew ten years ago that Goosebumps was giving us all a peek into the default cinematic mold of one of 2025’s few remaining movie stars?
*= Well, except for his absolutely insufferable voicework as Claptrap in Borderlands. So. Many. Bad. Quips. Hearing a Jack Black-voiced robot refer to a vending machine as “hot chips” is absolute Hell.
