The world of Minecraft is coming to the big screen next year, with Mojang Studios' ever-popular sandbox game getting its first feature film starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa. What some viewers may not realize is that the upcoming adaptation is titled A Minecraft Movie, and it uses this particular naming convention for one very specific reason.
The Minecraft movie adaptation has had an arduous road to the screen with multiple creative teams dropping out of the project before it could enter production. Eventually, the project was fast-tracked when Jared Hess boarded the film as director and brought with him his Nacho Libre collaborator Jack Black to star as Minecraft's player character, Steve. Filming was completed on the project by the end of April 2024, cementing A Minecraft Movie as one of 2025's major video game adaptations.
The Minecraft Movie Should Have Copied Another Successful Adaptation
The Lego Movie was a shocking success because it maintained its source material's gimmick. A Minecraft Movie could have done the same.
How The Minecraft Movie Got Its Name
When the first trailer for the Minecraft movie adaptation was released in September 2024 it was to mixed results. Criticisms were lobbied at the film's live-action elements, particularly its CGI version of the game's colorful block Overworld. Another thing the trailer reiterated was the film's official name, which is A Minecraft Movie. So why A Minecraft Movie instead of The Minecraft Movie or just Minecraft?
Director Jared Hess answered this question during the recent Minecraft Live 2024 presentation on YouTube which provided a new clip from A Minecraft Movie, as well as dug into the behind-the-scenes making of the film. "It's very intentional that this movie is called A Minecraft Movie as opposed to The Minecraft Movie," Hess explained. "Part of that is because, just like every Minecrafter, every player, they bring their own original story to what they're doing."
It appears A Minecraft Movie was chosen as the film's name so that the adaptation could pay tribute to the nature of the game it is adapting. In Minecraft, players are given free rein to explore the open sandbox world and choose their adventure, which results in some weird and truly wonderful creations. For the Minecraft movie adaptation, it seems the creatives did not want the name of the film to be too definitive. The use of 'A' in the title suggests that this is just one iteration of Minecraft on the big screen, meaning another team could easily come along and bring their creative ideas to the table, which could result in a completely different Minecraft adaptation, similar to how players experience the game.
Why Is A Minecraft Movie Live-Action?
Many Minecraft fans are hesitant towards the movie, judging by the reaction to the film's first trailer. The majority of criticisms aimed at A Minecraft Movie have been at its live-action nature, with many preferring the film be tackled in another format more akin to the game's aesthetic, such as animation. Torfi Frans Olafsson, creative director at Mojang Studios and producer on A Minecraft Movie, addressed the choice to make a live-action film during Minecraft Live:
We thought a lot about what kind of movie to do. We chose live-action because it's not something that's been seen before on this scale.
Hess agreed with this sentiment, saying the live-action route would help them stand out from all the Minecraft content that had been done before. "Creators have made such amazing stories, and short films, and content in the animation space. It was like, this was the chance for us, doing a film, to do something different," Hess said. Olafsson added it opened the door for new story avenues, answering questions he had mused over regarding what would happen if humans entered the Minecraft world.
Despite the live-action skepticism many fans may have, there are indicators that A Minecraft Movie will adapt portions of the game faithfully. The first clip from the film debuted during Minecraft Live and previewed how A Minecraft Movie will handle the process of crafting. Jack Black's Steve shows the human characters how to combine different elements in a crafting table, which results in new creations, like weapons and items. This operates in a very similar way to crafting in the video game.The Overworld in A Minecraft Movie also presents everything in block format. "Everything is cubic," Olafsson said during the presentation, which is, for better or worse, very true to the presentation of the world in the Minecraft game. "We had to honor what you experience in the game, but also make it work for human scale," Hess said, explaining the thought process that went into constructing each of the Minecraft game elements for a live-action format. The duo discussed how much thought went into determining the scale of each of the blocks in the Minecraft world of the movie, which exhibits the team's commitment to replicating the game faithfully. Some of these elements transfer more smoothly than others in A Minecraft Movie. As the trailer exhibited, items like swords or castles are easily relatable in a live-action Minecraft block style, but other elements, like the Overworld sheep, are less easily accepted in a block format that is outside of the game's signature style. A Minecraft Movie is scheduled to be released in cinemas in April 2025.