On paper, Minecraft’s basically an unlimited Lego simulator. Yet, thanks to expansive worlds, Survival mode, and countless mods, the virtual sandbox has become one of the best-selling games of all time, winning over the hearts of adults and children alike. Of course, it was only going to be a matter of time before Minecraft finally reached Nintendo’s latest console, the Switch.
While lacking the modifications available on PC — many via the game’s feverish fanbase — Switch Edition has quickly proven itself the ultimate handheld version of Minecraft. Building houses, defeated Nether monsters, and conceiving contraptions has never been so easily playable. Forget the iPhone version with difficult controls and lacking features, Nintendo’s latest has almost everything you could possibly want from Minecraft.
Without boring you with exactly what Minecraft is — if you’re not sure, either you’ve been living under a rock or missed our ‘what is Minecraft’ article — Survival and Creative modes are both playable on the Switch, as are some fun mini-games, Battle and Rumble. Thanks to running on a Nintendo product, the quite brilliant and extensive Mario skins are also available, coming with a built-in adventure mode to explore.
That’s everything you pretty much expect from a Minecraft game. Where Switch Edition lacks is mainly the draw distance which cannot match its PS4 and Xbox One counterparts but manages to beat last generation consoles. If you do own Minecraft on other consoles, you also won’t be able to port maps over. Another disappointment; when docked, the game also doesn’t run on 1080p, currently being locked to 720p.
On Switch, Minecraft remains the same fun and creative game the world has come to love. Nintendo’s latest console offers a brilliant portable versio, the only major drawback being that — unlike some other Switch games — you need another set of Joy-Cons, or a pro-controller, to play multiplayer. Playing two players with one set would have made Switch Edition almost perfect. As it stands, Switch Edition is another must-have for Minecraft’s gigantic fanbase and a fun sandbox for those who have never indulged in Minecraft.
Minecraft is no stranger to crossovers with other popular franchises and such, with a recent example being the Fallout 4 Mash-Up Pack. Today, Minecraft players will be able to grab the brand new Adventure Time Mash-Up Pack, bringing the acclaimed animated Cartoon Network series to the game.
The pack is said to include a host of character skins from the series, including Finn, Jake, Ice King, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum and more, with the announcement going on to describe what else arrives with the pack as follows:
This isn't just another skin pack – goodness no – as the entire land of Ooo takes over your Minecraft world! Take Fionna and Cake on a tour of the Candy Kingdom, fight Ice King in the Ice Kingdom and even take a trip with Flame Princess to the Fire Kingdom! And much much more!
In celebration of this crossover, the announcement blog post even includes an interview with the creator of Adventure Time animated series, Pendleton Ward, regarding his gaming experiences.
The Minecraft Adventure Time Mash-Up Pack is now available for the Console Edition, costing $5.99. However, the pack will be delayed on the Wii U and Nintendo Switch by, at most, a day, with the Pocket and Windows 10 Edition slated to receive the pack at later date.
Meanwhile, the Magic: The Gathering skin pack is also now available for purchase on the Minecraft Console Edition with a $2.99 price tag. The skin pack was initially available only for the Pocket and Windows 10 Edition.
While fans have spotted the most obvious and hyped celebrity cameo in the film (Beatles icon Sir Paul McCarthy), there may have been another big celebrity who makes quite an unsual appearance in Dead Men Tell No Tales: one of the biggest stars on one the biggest TV shows around: The Walking Dead.
Read on for the SPOILER-FILLED theory on how Pirates of the Caribbean 5 may have dropped a nice Walking Dead Easter egg into its story – and how it forms a major connection between the two.
Early on in Dead Men tell No Tales, Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow finds himself (not surprisingly) in the frying pan again, captured alongside suspected witch Carina Smith (Kaya Scodelario) and slated for execution. Carina gets selected for death by hanging; Jack, on the other hand, gets senteced to die by a new invention: the guillitone.
Jack gets hauled onto the stage and locked into the guillitone, still unaware of what, exactly, the death machine even does. He quickly gets the picture, however, when he looks into the basket in front of him, and notices that it's filled with severed heads!
The camera gives us the briefest shot of the heads in the basket – and this is where the supposed Walking Dead connection comes in: one of the heads looks suspiciously like Walking Dead star, Andrew Lincoln! After Comicbook.com staff first got hint of the possible Easter egg, additional staff went into Pirates 5 for a second look. The moment is so quick that it's hard to confirm, but it definitely isn't outside the realm of possiblity.
For fans of both franchises may deduce, there are other recent events that add more smoke onto this possible fire…
The reason there is major suspicion of Pirates working an Andrew Licoln severed head gag into the mix is because The Walking Dead already did it first!
In The Walking Dead season 6, Rick Grimes and Co. try to fool the malcious Saviors into thinking they've killed Gregory, leader of The Hilltop, by delivering his severed head. In order to pull the ruse off, Rick and Co. must pick a head that looks close enough to Gergory out of a lineup. One of the heads in that lineup was sculpted after Johnny Depp! That Easter egg became a big headline, and the famous Depp head eventually became part of Walking Dead star Norman Reedus' collection of memorabilia from the show.
If Pirates of the Caribbean wanted to have a little fun in responding to The Walking Dead, having a sculpt of Andrew Lincoln's severed head show up onscreen would be a fun little ‘clap back' at the show. So how legit is the Easter egg? Comicbook.com has reached out to parties at both The Walking Dead and Disney. The Walking Dead people we've spoken to don't seem to know anything about it; we have yet to hear any official response from Disney.
The Walking Dead will return for its eighth season in October of 2017. The first trailer is expected to arrive at San Diego Comic Con in July. For complete coverage and insider info all off-season long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.
Everything about the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is big: the hats, the sword battles, Johnny Depp’s eyeliner, and of course, the budgets — including one very specific budget. While some might scoff at the price tag for the two Gore Verbinski–directed follow-ups to the original Pirates ($225 million for Dead Man’s Chest and $300 million for At World’s End), those people clearly don’t know how much food it takes to feed pretend swashbucklers. According to Jack Davenport, who played the white-wigged, Jack Sparrow foil, Commodore James Norrington, the snack budget on the 2006 and 2007 sequels was quite astounding. Davenport recounted to The Hollywood Reporter a conversation he had with the craft services chef about the snacks budget:
“He looked me square in the eye and said ‘essentially unlimited.’ I was like ‘what does that mean?’ He was like ‘I don’t know, $2 million.’ I was like ‘For snacks?’ And he was like ‘yeah?’
While Davenport was quick to point out that this might not be as frivolous as it sounds — there were a lot of hungry people working both behind and in front of the cameras on those blockbusters — we can’t help but wonder how much of that money was dedicated to disappearing bottles of rum.
Despite any talk of franchise fatigue at the domestic box office, or a splattering from Rotten Tomatoes, the larger story for Disney’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is told in its global tally, which as of this morning has a worldwide start of $326 million, the 20th-best worldwide debut of all time.
According to Deadline film finance sources, the consensus is that Pirates 5 is looking forward to an estimated profit north of $280M after all revenue streams are tabulated. This is based off an industry-projected final global box office haul of $850M. Keep in mind, Japan hasn’t opened yet, and that territory delivered the franchise’s best grosses out of any foreign country — re On Stranger Tides ($91M), At World’s End ($91M) and the first movie Curse Of The Black Pearl ($60M). Disney always knew that domestic wasn’t going to be that strong for Dead Men Tell No Tales, especially after On Stranger Tides six years agodelivered only 23% of its $1.045 billion global tally from domestic.
Our profit estimations for Pirates 5 aren’t attributed to Disney sources.
The added win here for Disney with Pirates 5 is how the $4.05 billion Pirates seriesspurs its theme park and merchandise businesses, something other major studios can’t count on with their franchises. Recently, the Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association attributed the $118 billion made in 2016 movie/entertainment global retail toy revenue to the year-round sale of Star Wars product for The Force Awakens and Rogue One. We currently hear that Pirates Of The Caribbean merchandise revenue is estimated at $65M (some think that number is too low), with Asian venues like Shanghai Disney Resort and Hong Kong Disneyland key drivers.
Paramount
With these long-in-the-tooth franchises waning sequel by sequel at the domestic B.O. — think Pirates, Transformers, Fast And The Furious — it’s the burgeoning markets and emerging middle classes overseas that enable Hollywood to keep making these tentpoles, even as U.S./Canada audiences arguably lose interest as underscored by their wallets. When building these titles financially, the majors acknowledge that the U.S. represents 4% of the world’s 7.5 billion population.
With $180.7M over four days, the just-ended Memorial Day weekend was the lowest in two decades, down 42% from the 2013 high of $314.2M. Versus last year, close to $25M was missing from this year’s holiday marketplace thanks to the soft Pirates 5 opening($78.4M over four days) and Baywatch‘s blowout($27.7M over five days). A month ago, both were projected at $90M-$100M and $45M-$50M, respectively in their openings, but when sour Rotten Tomatoes scores hit, it impacted both pics’ estimates.
Some have argued not to lump Pirates 5 and Baywatch in the same sentence in the Memorial Day frame; the latter is bound to lose significantly more money. But the bigger point here is the overall franchise fatigue taking place stateside following last weekend’s $36.1M start for Alien: Covenant (Baywatch, had it worked, would have certainly been a new cinematic series). Wonder Woman, though connected to DC, offers something new and fresh to moviegoers in that it’s arguably the first female comic-book superhero property to work onscreen. The Rotten Tomatoes rating for the Gal Gadot movie is currently at 97% off 64 reviews, and if that score can maintain itself, it could potentially push the pic’s domestic opening to $95M — though Warner Bros still sees it between $65M-$75M.
In recent years, Disney is the only major studio in town that can win on all fronts with its Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, live action-group and animation labels: beaming A- or higher CinemaScores, awesome B.O. results, and glorious certified ruby red Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Truly, they are the envy of all. However, stateside critics have loathed Pirates since the second installment, with the most recent one registering the lowest at 31% Rotten, and Disney has yet to turn that boat around. Of the five movies, Pirates 5 reps the fourth-best stateside opening. Some attribute the ease here to marketing, others to Johnny Depp and his controversial image which can turn off moms, but the fact is that at the end of this weekend, Disney is yo-ho-ho-ing all the way to the bank.
While box office analysts love to take digs that this summer at $777.9M is down 9% versus last year through its first four weekends, and that Memorial Day was in shambles, overall the theatrical marketplace in the U.S. and Canada this year is healthy, counting $4.4B to date per comScore, 2% ahead of 2016’s banner year which yielded $11.4B.
Scroll down to see this weekend’s Memorial Day actual box office figures.
‘Pirates’ Tells Profit Tale
Stream
Est. costs
Est. revenue
Est. profit
Domestic B.O.
$175M
Foreign B.O.
$650M
Worldwide B.O.
$825M
Domestic Rental
$96M
Foreign Rental
$292M
Net Global Home Entertainment
$130M-$140M
Net Global TV
$75M
Merchandise
$65M+
Est. Total Revenue
$663M+
Production Cost
$230M
Global P&A
$150M
Total Costs*
$380M
Est. Profit
$283M+
*before profits, residuals, participations
Final weekend actuals for Memorial Day weekend, per ComScore
1.). Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (DIS), 4,276 theaters / 3-day cume: $62.9M / Per screen average: $$14,729 / 4-day cume: $78.4M / Per screen: $18,353 / Wk 1
2.). The Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (DIS), 3,871 theaters (-476) / 3-day cume: $20.9M / Per screen: $5,401 / 4-day cume: $27.1M / Per screen: $7,024 / Total cume: $340.5M / Wk 4
3.). Baywatch (PAR), 3,647 theaters / 3-day cume: $18.5M / Per screen: $5,074/ 4-day cume: $23.1M / Per screen: $6,336 / Total cume: $27.7M (Wednesday bow) / Wk 1
Pokémon Cobalt and Amethyst is a new Minecraft mod that takes the intersection of the two gaming worlds to an entirely new level.
If a game allows mods, you can be sure a fair share of them will be Pokémon-inspired. And while there are no shortage of similar projects created using Minecraft, Cobalt and Amethyst is by far and away one of the most ambitious. It’s also one of the more unique for being a map rather than a mod, meaning that anyone who has the vanilla Minecraft version 1.8.8 can simply download it and begin playing.
Cobalt and Amethyst doesn’t just insert creatures and mechanics from the series into Minecraft either, it creates an entirely new Pokémon adventure. According to the creators behind the project, the story lasts over 60 hours and includes 136 Pokémon, mixing creatures from all over the series. While the map is supposed to be reminiscent of the original Game Boy versions, using classic sound effects and borrowing some of the music, the actual playable campaign is completely different.
The game itself isn’t entirely pretty, but the depth of the world building is impressive in its own right. According to its lead producer, Phoenix SC, the map includes everything from battling, capturing, and training Pokémon to challenging individual Gym Leaders.
“The map places itself in a never-before-seen region, featuring a new set of 136 Pokémon and a new story dominated by an antagonist threatening to release a Legendary darkness that demands tribute. It is your task to seek the truth with the help of the region’s Professor and your rival – either capture it before it’s too late, or take Team Tempest down while saving the lives of those closest to you.”
The team behind the map have even started putting together a walk through for the entire game. Phoenix SC claims to have recently beaten the game in approximately 70 hours with a team of Pokémon all around level 50. Which is nothing when you realize the project took nearly three years to complete.
You can download the Cobalt and Amethyst map here.
