{"id":2215403,"date":"2025-12-29T11:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T11:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2215403"},"modified":"2025-12-29T11:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T11:52:08","slug":"have-we-massively-underestimated-jack-blacks-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/have-we-massively-underestimated-jack-blacks-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"Have we massively underestimated Jack Black\u2019s appeal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"main\">\n<div class=\"hydrate-root sc-10wlkbs-0\" data-component=\"Newsletter\" data-loading=\"lazy\" data-theme-name=\"base\">\n<aside class=\"sc-y4bm30-0 jwWhkK newsletter-component sc-1ge0fwe-0\" data-newsletter-key=\"receiveIndyArtsAndEntertainmentNews\">\n<div class=\"sc-y4bm30-2 kcLSBk\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"sc-y4bm30-1 inRDZn\">\n<div class=\"sc-y4bm30-3\">\n<div class=\"sc-y4bm30-4 hfveGa\">\n<p><h3 class=\"sc-y4bm30-5 sc-y4bm30-6 fvoxRM fafQAy\">Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email<\/h3>\n<h3 class=\"sc-y4bm30-5 sc-y4bm30-8 fvoxRM fvWmZq\">Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter <\/h3>\n<h3 class=\"sc-y4bm30-5 sc-y4bm30-7 fvoxRM hkVmms\">Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter <\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<p><svg class=\"sc-eaj12q-0 hKcUSR sc-culv3z-0 eifaJK sc-1ix0cah-0 PYnPb sc-y4bm30-10 fUEDPX\"><use href=\"#600f53465147d717\"\/><\/svg><\/div>\n<div class=\"sc-y4bm30-2 kcLSBk sc-y4bm30-9 iQYNfz\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.independent.co.uk\/static-assets\/images\/newsletters\/indyArts1_1.png\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"IndependentCulture\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"big-letter\">I<\/span>s <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/jack-black\">Jack Black<\/a> the biggest star in the world? Ask quite literally anyone and they\u2019d probably \u2013 <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/jack-black-minecraft-movie-borderlands-b2608214.html\" title=\"2024 is the year everyone turned on Jack Black \u2013 it\u2019s been a long time coming\">and very quickly<\/a> \u2013 say \u201cno\u201d. But the numbers don\u2019t lie: in a year in which major A-listers have struggled to open movies, among them established reliables such as Dwayne Johnson and Julia Roberts as well as nascent stars including <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/reviews\/running-man-2025-review-glen-powell-b2863427.html\" title=\"The Running Man review \u2013 a near-total failure from Edgar Wright and Glen Powell\">Glen Powell<\/a> and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/news\/sydney-sweeney-christy-martin-movie-box-office-b2863425.html\" title=\"Sydney Sweeney breaks silence after boxing biopic Christy becomes one of the biggest box office bombs ever\">Sydney Sweeney<\/a>, audiences have lined up in droves to see both of Black\u2019s 2025 star vehicles. And it\u2019s even more impressive when both of those movies are comedies, a genre largely shunted out of cinemas, and critically reviled comedies at that.<\/p>\n<p>This Christmas week, Black <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/tv\/features\/christmas-2025-movies-tv-avatar-goodbye-june-anaconda-b2889333.html\" title=\"What to watch over Christmas and new year, from Amandaland to Anaconda\">can be seen in a reboot of the cult 1997 monster movie<\/a> <em>Anaconda<\/em>, in which Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube were terrorised by a giant snake. The new <em>Anaconda<\/em> is more intentionally funny than the so-bad-it\u2019s-charming original, with Black starring as an <em>Anaconda<\/em> superfan who decides to remake the movie with his best friend, played by Paul Rudd. Venturing to the Amazonian jungle, the pair unfortunately encounter an actual, real-life 25 ft snake.<\/p>\n<p>The new <em>Anaconda<\/em> has been torn apart by critics, but it\u2019s speculated to gross at least $20m in its opening weekend in the US, which should quickly put it in profit considering its low budget of just $45m. And it could follow a similar trajectory as April\u2019s <em>The Minecraft Movie<\/em>, which starred Black as a doorknob seller transported into a video game world, and ended up grossing a colossal $958m at the global box office.<\/p>\n<p>Long since removed from his acclaimed, star-making performances in movies such as <em>High Fidelity<\/em> and <em>School of Rock<\/em>, Black hasn\u2019t led a live-action movie that\u2019s been a hit with critics since 2017. That was when his other Nineties reboot <em>Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle<\/em> drew enough positive reviews to eke out a 77 per cent average score on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.<\/p>\n<p>Despite such creative stagnation, his work reliably seems to print money, with <em>Welcome to the Jungle<\/em> and its 2019 sequel <em>The Next Level<\/em> collectively grossing nearly $2 billion at the box office (another sequel is due next Christmas). Last year\u2019s <em>Kung Fu Panda 4<\/em>, the latest installment in a franchise trading largely on his comic persona (in panda form), grossed half a billion. Even his dismal straight-to-streaming 2024 comedy <em>Dear Santa<\/em> has seen success, with the movie sitting among the most-watched movies on Paramount+ at the time of writing. (An outlier? Last year\u2019s disastrous video game movie <em>Borderlands<\/em> \u2013 but perhaps it might have made money if it placed Black centre stage, rather than asking him to merely voice a robot?)<\/p>\n<div class=\"sc-awdjp1-2 cbpRGD sc-awdjp1-3 image align-right\">\n<figure class=\"sc-1cbdeug-0 cXcwgU\">\n<div class=\"sc-awdjp1-0 iswtrx\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.independent.co.uk\/2025\/12\/26\/11\/58\/AP25346669257540.jpeg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.independent.co.uk\/2025\/12\/26\/11\/58\/AP25346669257540.jpeg?quality=75&amp;width=320&amp;crop=2%3A3%2Csmart&amp;trim=0%2C186%2C0%2C119&amp;auto=webp 320w, https:\/\/static.independent.co.uk\/2025\/12\/26\/11\/58\/AP25346669257540.jpeg?quality=75&amp;width=640&amp;crop=2%3A3%2Csmart&amp;trim=0%2C186%2C0%2C119&amp;auto=webp 640w\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Flogging a dead boar: Jack Black in the (probable) hit comedy \u2018Anaconda\u2019\" class=\"sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"sc-1cbdeug-1 sc-1cbdeug-3 gtVitN hgzWpY\">Flogging a dead boar: Jack Black in the (probable) hit comedy \u2018Anaconda\u2019<span class=\"sc-1cbdeug-7 exGSyR\"> <!-- -->(<!-- -->AP<!-- -->)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t seem to matter that critics have been largely unkind to Black\u2019s recent output, either. Writing in her review of <em>The Minecraft Movie<\/em>, <em>The Independent<\/em>\u2019s film critic Clarisse Loughrey <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/reviews\/minecraft-movie-review-jack-black-cast-release-date-b2726057.html\" title=\"In A Minecraft Movie, Jack Black is like a desperate clown at an underattended children\u2019s party\">lamented Black\u2019s performance in particular<\/a>, writing: \u201cHe delivers lines in the desperate tenor of a clown at an under-attended children\u2019s birthday party.\u201d Still, exit polls in the US suggested that <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2025\/04\/box-office-a-minecraft-movie-1236359247\/\">28 per cent of audiences sought out<\/a> <em>The Minecraft Movie<\/em> solely because of Black, suggesting they\u2019d follow him anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhat unusually, Black this week admitted to paying attention to the success of his own movies. \u201cThis is gross and I shouldn\u2019t reveal it, but I like to go on to Box Office Mojo and see how well a film did at the weekend,\u201d he told <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/culture\/film\/article\/jack-black-and-paul-rudd-people-are-hungry-for-comedy-in-these-dark-times-z28tzbpcv\"><em>The Times<\/em><\/a>. \u201cHow are the numbers? It\u2019s a f***ing fun game. It\u2019s a competition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019ll be happy about <em>Anaconda<\/em> at least, which looks set to pull in big figures over the Christmas break and into the New Year \u2013 despite threats from the likes of Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s <em>Marty Supreme<\/em> and the Sydney Sweeney thriller <em>The Housemaid<\/em>. On that note, much has been made of Sweeney\u2019s <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/sydney-sweeney-jeans-controversy-christy-b2863801.html\" title=\"Sydney Sweeney has lost control of her stardom\">recent box office woes<\/a>, but there might be a simple solution: throw her in something with Jack Black, and presumably let the money roll in.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018Anaconda\u2019 is in cinemas<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Is Jack Black the biggest star in the world? Ask quite literally anyone and they\u2019d probably \u2013 and very quickly \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1948653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2215403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Strictly-2025-BBC-loses-professional-competitor-for-new-series.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215404,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215403\/revisions\/2215404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1948653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}