A Minecraft Movie is the biggest live-action movie of Jack Black’s career, but it’s far from his only big hit in the last decade. Though his acting credits date back to 1992, Black didn’t score his first $300+ million domestic box office grosser until 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Since then, Black’s been on fire as a box office draw thanks not only to a Jumanji sequel but principal voice roles in Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. These titles join earlier moneymakers in his career like King Kong and School of Rock that solidified Black as a special box office draw.
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Now that every word Black utters in A Minecraft Movie has dominated platforms like TikTok, it’s easy to forget that his leading man career almost got derailed with a certain 2010 box office flop. This project capsized so badly that it truly seemed to spell the end for his big screen exploits. That project was the Christmas 2010 family movie Gulliver’s Travels, the dud that nearly capsized Black’s rocking career.
What On Earth Happened With Gulliver’s Travels?
Starting with High Fidelity in 2000, Black began starring and co-starring in a steady stream of major theatrical films in the 2000s. Gulliver’s Travels, on paper, looked like another version of past Black star vehicles like School of Rock or Year One. Distirbutor 20th Century Fox also clearly hoped Gulliver’s Travels could mimic the success of fellow VFX-heavy Christmas family movie Night at the Museum. However, even before its release, this weird adaptation of the 1726 Jonathan Swift text was a weird creation. Trailers for this adaptation of 18th-century literature confused audiences by emphasizing distinctly modern or futuristic elements like a miniature version of Kiss or a robotic adversary for Black to fight.
Dismal reviews didn’t help Gulliver’s Travels’ case, though what really clinched its dreary box office fate was the deluge of family movie competition in December 2010. Yogi Bear and fellow Fox title The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader were all competing for the dollars of families in this month. Thanksgiving 2010 blockbuster Tangled, meanwhile, was still in theaters, dazzling audiences. On top of all that, Gulliver’s Travels didn’t have as compelling a starting premise as something like Night at the Museum or past Black vehicles like Nacho Libre. Everyone can relate to being fascinated by museum exhibits. Underdog tales like Libre are very engaging.
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Gulliver’s Travels just featured Jack Black towering over people only a few inches tall and being a lying scoundrel. None of it hit any of the buttons audiences wanted from a Christmastime family film. Thus, Gulliver’s Travels drowned at the box office with only $42.77 million domestically. That was way below almost every other Jack Black star vehicle in that decade. Previous projects like Shallow Hal and Year One, though, cost way less to make than Gulliver’s $112 million budget. Overseas grosses boosted Gulliver’s Travels to a $232 million worldwide gross, but that wasn’t enough. This feature was truly a bomb, plain and simple.
How Did The Gulliver’s Fallout Impact Black’s Career?
For five years after Gulliver’s Travels, Black’s only live-action starring role in a major studio release was The Big Year (which had already completed principal photography before Gulliver’s came out). He did play Po again in Kung Fu Panda 2 and showed up in a hysterical The Muppets cameo. However, Black mostly went into the indie movie realm, headlining The D Train and delivering an acclaimed turn in 2012’s Bernie. He even starred in 10 episodes of the HBO comedy The Brink, which only lasted one season. When he did return to major studio family movies with Goosebumps, Black’s roles were clearly more calculated efforts.
For one thing, Black was now starring in movies that had more relevant source material. No more anchoring titles based on texts from the 1700s. Goosebumps was a book series that originated in the 1990s. The House with a Clock in its Walls was based on a 1973 book. The Jumanji features were extensions of a famous 1990s kids’ movie. Meanwhile, he was also just one member of an ensemble cast in these titles. Now, if one of these projects flopped, he wouldn’t be the face of the failure like with Gulliver’s Travels.
This approach not only lent box office stability to Black’s filmography but it also opened up new avenues to show off his acting talents. His beloved Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle performance, for instance, wouldn’t have materialized if he was determined to only take leading man parts. For a brief moment, Gulliver’s Travels truly looked like the end of Jack Black’s major studio acting career. Instead, its failure led to him switching gears creatively and opening up the doors to his most lucrative films ever. A Minecraft Movie’s success alone already erases any fallout damage from the box office losses of Gulliver’s Travels.
A Minecraft Movie is now playing in theaters, and Gulliver’s Travels is now streaming on Disney+.
