Jack Black Admits He Only Reads Negative Reviews: ‘I Skip Over the Good Ones’

Jack Black may be one of his generation’s most beloved comedic actors, but that doesn’t mean bad reviews don’t get to him. The “A Minecraft Movie” and “Kung Fu Panda” star stopped by the podcast “Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade” and the trio of funnymen got real about reading negative reviews of their work.

“Yeah, I read the negative ones,” Black admitted when the hosts asked. “I skip over the good ones. I get the gist of it, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, good,’ and I look for those bad ones. I’ll read every word, and I will, like, mutter to myself, ‘f— you, you f—ng asshole.'”

Black also said he remembers the names of the critics who wrote the really bad ones. “I’m gonna commit this name to memory and if I ever see this reviewer on the street, I’ll have some choice words,” the actor said with a laugh, adding, “I’ve never followed up on any of them.”

You might think he’d take some relief in “Minecraft” becoming an instant hit, but the actor was quick to point out “it’s a splat on Rotten Tomatoes” when Carvey read him some positive reviews of the film, referring to the film’s “Rotten” score with critics (though it currently has a fresh 86% “Popcornmeter” score from audiences).

He also wasn’t so quick to embrace the “instant hit” mindset. Asked about where his head’s at after starring in a breakout success like “Minecraft,” Black said, “I feel good. Feels good. Yeah, a hit?”

“I’m always skeptical though,” he continued. “I’m like, can we just wait for a second before we go calling it a hit? What if it tanks next weekend? Let’s see if this baby’s got legs. Talk to me a couple weeks, ok guys?”

Carvey asked if Black had a particular number in mind and it turns out he did: $700 million, and he explained precisely why.

“Here’s the thing, I do have a little thing about numbers and math,” Black said, breaking down how high the bar can be for a mega-budget movie to profit. “I do like to think about that. So I go: Okay, if it costs 150 to make, and then you figure they probably spent almost that much on promoting it, so there’s 300 right there.”

But it’s not just marketing that factors into Black’s calculation, there’s also the theater owner’s cut. “If you go to a theater and it makes the monies — even if it makes 300 million, then has it broken even? No, because you only get half of that,” Black said. “The theaters keep half the money.”

“You gotta make 600 million, really, to break even,” he concluded. “And then you go: Okay, so 600, but that’s break even. So it’s not really a hit until it’s made more than 600. So you’ve got to make 700 to think that it’s really a hit. 700, and that’s a big, monster number.”

Good news for Black since this podcast was taped (which seems to be a couple of weeks ago), because “Minecraft” has made more than his big, monster number by this point, and played a key role in propelling the 2025 box office into a desperately needed recovery. How much, since we’re talking numbers? The film has grossed more $875 million at the worldwide box office as of this publishing, making it the biggest American movie of the year so far.

You can listen to the full podcast below. The review talk starts around the 42-minute mark and the box office talk is around the 44-minute mark.

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