Video game movies can be seriously big business these days. In 2023, The Super Mario Bros Movie was second only to Barbie in the global box office stakes ($1.36 million), while this Christmas brings the much-anticipated threequel Sonic The Hedgehog 3 – there’s a sense, all round, that Hollywood is proving more adept at bringing what gamers love about these worlds to the big screen. Next up? Make way for A Minecraft Movie, which is… well, a Minecraft movie, aiming to take the lo-fi, blocky sandbox smash hit and turn it into something cinematic. Here’s your first look at the trailer.
Even just from this first teaser, there’s a sense of the approach being taken here – a somewhat Jumanji-esque real-people-in-gaming-world narrative, while the evocation of the Minecraft world (all those square shapes remain intact, but the pixellated textures have been given a real-world finish) feels akin to The Mario Bros Movie. And like Mario and Sonic, there are starry cast members to anchor it all – namely, Jason Momoa with a particularly unusual fringe, and Jack Black, who appears to be contractually obliged to star in any film of this ilk. Here, he is ‘Steve’, who is the default character model in the Minecraft game. Plus, there are square llamas, square pigs, square trees, square sheep, and square fortresses. There even seems to be a crafting element, given that that’s a major part of the gameplay (hence, mine-craft).
Elsewhere, the cast for this one includes Wednesday star Emma Myers, Orange Is The New Black’s Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Eugene Hansen – and Jennifer Coolidge, though she doesn’t seem to appear in this teaser. The film comes from director Jared Hess, formerly of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre (perhaps explaining the Jack Black connection).
Will Hess and his cast manage to craft something cinematic out of a game like Minecraft? Since the game is somewhat akin to digital LEGO, can it pull off some of that LEGO Movie magic? Will Jack Black make a surprise appearance in Sonic 3 and add yet another kid-favourite gaming franchise to his infinity gauntlet? Answers to some of those questions will arrive in April 2025.