Do you know these 20 facts about 'A Minecraft Movie'?

Once “Minecraft” took off, hopes of developing a movie “based” on the game started to percolate. There was also an attempt to crowdfund a fan movie. This was despite the fact that, you know, they didn’t have the rights to the property or anything. However, and quite reasonably, the creator of “Minecraft” shut that nonsense down quickly.

Said creator, Markus Persson, first announced that Warner Bros. was working on a “Minecraft” movie in 2014. However, “Minecraft” publisher Mojang Studios told people to cool their jets. This was going to be a “large-budget” movie, and so fans were going to have to wait. Specifically, Mojang said that the “Minecraft” movie wouldn’t come out until at least 2018. Hey, technically that was true!

The first announced director was the hack-adjacent Shawn Levy, an unsurprising choice for such a film. That version of the project wouldn’t even last a year before Levy and the original screenwriters all left. Then, Rob McElhenney, of “Always Sunny” and Wrexham fame, was hired in 2015. A screenwriter, Jason Fuchs, was hired, and there was talks that Steve Carell would star. There was even a release date of May 24, 2019 announced. No dice there, either. By 2019, another person, Peter Sollett, was hired to write and direct.

As Sollett was working on his version of the movie, with a tentative release date of March 4, 2022, well, you can probably guess what happened. COVID-19 got in the way. At this point, Warner Bros. full-on removed the “Minecraft” movie from the schedule. In 2022, Warner Bros. would announce that project had been nixed, Jared Hess was to direct, and Jason Momoa was in talks to star. Both of these things came to fruition in the end.

In the end, “A Minecraft Movie” is 101 minutes and it is based on a game with a loose plot at best. There are five credited screenwriters, and three people got the Story By credit. Granted, Hubbel Palmer and Chris Bowman got both, but that’s still a lot of credited writers. That’s before we even get to the fact that “Additional Literary Credit” was given to, no joke, 22 people.

Hess and company did make a decision while crafting the story. This wasn’t to be a canon-setting film, but simply a story based on the world of “Minecraft,” such as it is. Thus, they opted to call it “A Minecraft Movie” as opposed to “The Minecraft Movie,” so as to not indicate it is definitive in any way.

When they tried to go live-action with “Super Mario Bros.,” it was a disaster. To be fair, that was an incoherent film that had nothing to do with the games. Animation wouldn’t have saved it, but the animated “Mario Bros.” movie was way more successful. Even so, Warner Bros. and the creative opted to eschew animation. When Hess was announced as the director, it was also announced the movie would be live-action.

“A Minecraft Movie” was shot in New Zealand, with Huntly standing in for the fictional town of Chuglass, Idaho. Why Idaho? That’s all Hess’ doing. He’s from Idaho, and famously he also set his breakthrough movie “Napoleon Dynamite” there.

At first, British actor Matt Berry was in talks to play Steve, and Jack Black was going to play the role of a talking pig in a cameo. Then, owing to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which also delayed filming, Berry couldn’t play Steve. Thus, Black stepped into that role, while Berry appears as the voice of Nitwit.

It’s not surprising that Black was willing to do a solid by Hess and cameo in his film, or that Hess would turn to Black to replace Berry as Steve when that became necessitated. The two had worked together previously on “Nacho Libre,” the movie where Black plays a luchador.

It’s not Charlize Theron popping up in the credits of the second “Doctor Strange” movie to set up something that will likely never happen now, but it is notable. Former “SNL” standout Kate MacKinnon appears uncredited in a cameo during a post-credit scene. She voices Alex, a woman who is now living in Steve’s house.

Mark Mothersbaugh composed the score for “A Minecraft Movie.” For fans of indie movies, he’s scored some of Wes Anderson’s work. For Millennials, he did the music for “Rugrats.” For Gen Xers, he’s one of the guys from Devo. And for the Gen Zers, um, he’s the guy who scored “A Minecraft Movie.”

Even if a director doesn’t ask Black to contribute music to a movie he’s in, you kind of feel like he’s going to. The guy will end up riffing some catchy ditty and the director will think, “Damn, we have to include that now.” Black contributed several songs to “A Minecraft Movie.” One of those, “I Feel Alive,” had Mark Ronson and Dave Grohl on it.

The “song” “Steve’s Lava Chicken” is a tossed-off bit of silliness written by Black and Hess. It’s a 34-second bit of silliness that, for some reason, really resonated with people. To what degree? The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 and rose as high as No. 78, and it was also a top-40 single in the United Kingdom. “Steve’s Lava Chicken” is the shortest song to achieve either milestone in either country.

For those skeptical about a “Minecraft” movie in general, and “A Minecraft Movie” specifically, the first trailer served some material up on a platter for you. It was largely lambasted. It was edited poorly and made the movie look a bit uncanny valley. To the best of our knowledge, the visual effects didn’t get the “Sonic the Hedgehog” treatment, and a second trailer was better received.

Don’t overlook the power of nostalgia from a generation of youngsters who have been implicitly and explicitly promised their childhood never has to end. Original estimates for “A Minecraft Movie” in terms of the domestic box office were around $65-70 million. Maybe, if everything broke right, the film would get to $80 million. Yeah, try doubling that. “A Minecraft Movie” made $162.8 million domestically in its first weekend of release, bolstering what had been a sleepy box office. Worldwide, it made $313 million for its debut weekend

Even if making $1 billion is easier than it used to be thanks to inflation, it’s still rare. For a moment there, it looked like “A Minecraft Movie” would get there. After all, it had the highest-grossing domestic opening weekend for a movie based on a video game, surpassing “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” That one made it to $1 billion. Alas, Steve is no Mario. “A Minecraft Movie” cleared $900 million, but ended up falling short of adding another zero to the total.

Again, the Zoomers and younger Millennials with all their nostalgia probably enjoyed “A Minecraft Movie.” It’s a PG-rated big romp of kid-friendly entertainment. Finding anything substantive entertaining, though, proves trickier. Critically, it sits at 48 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and 45/100 on Metacritic. That speaks to a lukewarm reception, with some (reasonably) exasperated critics using words like “cash grab” to describe the film.

Naturally, memes were birthed from “A Minecraft Movie.” So were (sigh) TikTok trends. Now, there have been many a meme and a TikTok trend that have been harmless, even worthwhile. For “A Minecraft Movie,” what metastasized from the film was basically teens looking for an excuse to be utterly obnoxious. Of course, teenagers have been ruining things for others in public spaces since before the internet was even a thing, but the groupthink inherent to following a trend — not unlike being in a cult — emboldened them. There was property destruction, fights, Jack Black having to make an announcement to not throw popcorn like you’re five years old, and the like. Some tried to make a contrarian argument in favor of all this nonsense, but in the end it’s just a bunch of bored teens with bad taste unfortunately making news by doing it in a way connected to one of the biggest movies of 2025.

There is no way Warner Bros. lets “A Minecraft Movie” and its prospects to become a money-making franchise lay fallow. Nothing is official, but Hess has expressed a willingness to return. It has now been announced that a sequel is in the early stages of development. This time, we assume it doesn’t take over a decade to get to the big screen.