My brain is turning to jelly a bit. Between Soulja Boy’s now-defunct line of bootleg consoles (opens in new tab)and the equally unlikely Mad Box console from Project Cars developer Slightly Mad Studios (opens in new tab), I’m kind of losing my grip on reality. So, why not add Jack Black’s new YouTube (let’s play?) channel into the mix. It’s called Jablinski Games (opens in new tab), and Black reckons it’ll be bigger than Ninja and PewDiePie one day. Seems like an odd metric since Ninja is a Twitch streamer, not a YouTuber, but sure, why not.
Black’s first video was posted on December 21, 2018. It’s 28 seconds long, and at the time of writing, it has over 7.5 million views. Black says he’ll post a new video every Friday, and sure enough, his second video, a 49-second vlog posted on December 28, has racked up 6.7 million views. Here’s the kicker: with 77 seconds of content under its belt, Black’s channel has already reached 2.5 million subscribers. That’s still a few subscribers behind PewDiePie, but I’ve got to say, Black is making progress. Social media aggregator SocialBlade (opens in new tab) projects Black will reach PewDiePie’s current subscriber count of 79 million in around eight months, and at the current (obviously completely sustainable) rate, he’ll break 200 million by the end of 2020.
Assuming Black posts more than videos marking subscriber milestones in the coming weeks, what’s Jablinski Games going to be about? Well, in the description of his first video, Black said the channel will feature “games, food, and life.” Likewise, the channel’s description reads: “I’m Jack Black and I kinda like games.” Hey, you know, I like games, and I don’t particularly have anything against Jack Black. That sounds all right. Let’s see where this goes.
Jack Black has rubbed up against games before. Last year, he performed storied adventure game Grim Fandango live with the original cast.