With Minecraft being one of the most successful and iconic video game franchises of all time, it seemed inevitable that the blocky universe would someday make the jump to the silver screen.
That finally happened this year with ‘A Minecraft Movie‘, and the reception has been explosive. Despite mixed critical reviews, the first live action Minecraft flick has been breaking records during its theater tenure, and now it’s about to hit streaming services and digital platforms.
I sat down with Jens Bergensten, Chief Creative Officer, and Torfi Frans Ólafsson, Senior Creative Director, at Mojang Studios a few weeks ago, and the Minecraft movie’s wider release feels like the perfect time to explore what we discussed then.
This interview was edited for grammar and clarity. Mojang Studios and Microsoft had no input nor saw the contents of this article prior to publication.
The Minecraft movie’s long road to release
“When people ask ‘how do you feel?’, of course the answer is it’s really amazing… We’ve been working for this for quite some time,” Bergensten told me.
“At the end of the day, it feels like a successful rocket launch. We pitched it for 10 years and we weren’t sure if it was going to go into orbit… feeling that it could blow up any minute,” Ólafsson added. “So, we are over the moon now that it’s heading into deep space.”
Indeed, the Minecraft movie has been in development for a very long time, with rumored resets, shifting release dates, and long periods of complete silence before everything finally started coming together.
The movie we received is almost certainly completely different from the original vision. “We have been developing and writing the movie since [Jared Hess] joined in 2020,” Ólafsson stated. Just for context, Mojang Studios reportedly began working on a live-action Minecraft movie all the way back in 2014.
I am curious what that earlier movie may have looked like, but I’m more glad that Mojang Studios and Warner Bros. took the time to get it right.
The art of bringing a Minecraft story into our world
Minecraft is one of the most recognizable video games thanks to its distinct visual style, and most Minecraft fans likely would’ve been confident that any film or TV adaptation would use animation to capture it.
Alas, that’s not what we got. Mojang made the bold decision to pursue a live action format, but it didn’t take this approach lightly.
“The look that we chose wound up being similar as the look that comes out of Midjourney,” Ólafsson told me, finding the story funnier in hindsight. “When people saw the… first trailer, they were like, ‘Ah, this is just like AI,’ whereas we had chosen a certain color palette and texture that happened to look like what AI would.”
I can understand why some may accuse the bright and over-the-top visuals of ‘A Minecraft Movie’ of being AI-generated, but this direction was decided upon well before the rise of generative artificial intelligence — and it’s brought to life by real people and real materials.
“We thought that since it was live action, it had to feel as realistic as live action,” Ólafsson explained. “We wanted gritty detail… We wanted to really feel that the sets were alive.”
To make this happen, the Minecraft movie team spent hundreds of hours creating real props and sets for the movie, an effort that took years and a lot of manpower. Of course, VFX effects and CGI are liberally used, but it was all about striking a balance.
“The sets and the props and the army of VFX artists makes it blend really well. I might be biased, but I didn’t really think so much about the mix between live actors and CGI characters,” Bergensten said.
“The unsung heroes of the movie are the stunt performers and the choreographers and the dancers,” Ólafsson continued. “I say ‘dancers’ because they are pepole are who are trained in motion, who were the villagers and the piglins and the mobs. They were all people in suits.”
The finished movie can look a little cursed, but it also feels intentional. I have to admit, ‘A Minecraft Movie’ is an incredibly impressive visual showcase, and I highly doubt I’d feel that way if the movie were 100% CGI rather than a mixture.
Celebrating the writers… And the magic of music
Actors supposedly improvising the most memorable moments in movies has become suspiciously common in recent years, and is rarely backed by any concrete evidence. I’ve seen similar claims about Jack Black and Jason Momoa’s performances in ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ so I brought it up during our conversation.
Both Mojang members were quick to credit the writing team for the vast majority of the movie’s script. “The cast comes in later,” Ólaffson confirmed. “When people are talking about how the cast improvised this and that, the writers get pretty pissed off because they actually wrote the story.”
Work on the Minecraft movie started years before the acting stars were brought onboard for filming, and a lot of work went into writing a fun, accessible script for all ages, filled with Minecraft easter eggs.
“Once someone was cast, like [Jack Black], [the writers] were able to start writing in his voice,” Ólaffson continued. “It’s mostly comparable to somebody going into the kitchen and adding a little spice and a little bit of this and that — but the meat had already been bought and the sauce was already cooking”
From what I’ve seen behind the scenes, the Minecraft movie cast simply had fun while shooting. Most of what you see in the film was meticulously planned, but actors did still have the freedom to throw in an occasional joke of their own.
One iconic element of ‘A Minecraft Movie’ was only made possible because of one of the stars, though.
The Minecraft movie can hardly be described as a musical, but it’s still filled with jingles that caught many by surprise. In fact, one such song, ‘Lava Chicken’, claimed a record as the shortest song to reach the Billboard 100 charts, at just 34 seconds long.
“It was [Jack Black]. We didn’t have music… I don’t think it’s a secret, he asked if he could bring a couple of tunes and, sure enough, he did,” Ólaffson said. “Some of them, like ‘Lava Chicken’, was one that was the only take. We rolled the camera and he sang it.”
It’s far from the first time Jack Black has blessed a movie with original music, and fans loved his contributions to the Minecraft movie. It’s one reason why Black may have been the best choice to play Steve, after the original choice of Matt Berry couldn’t fill that role.
“Jack has been a champion for creativity and expression in a lot of movies… He has a lot of songs within him and they just had to get out,” Ólaffson continued. “He had more, but you know, those were the ones that made it in.”
A new way to go behind the scenes
I wanted to break away from my own conversation with the Minecraft movie team to share another way to peek behind the curtains. I was sent a copy of ‘A Minecraft Movie: From Block to Big Screen’, a very comprehensive overview of bringing this movie to life.
It’s 192 pages of in-depth information, all the way from the first stages of creation to the final steps that ensured this movie’s success, complete with new interviews, exclusive imagery, and more. There’s even a foreword from Jens Bergensten (yes, the same Jens Bergensten I spoke to for this article).
There are plenty of behind-the-scenes books for plenty of movies, TV shows, and video games, but many feel thrown together with existing information and art. I was honestly shocked by how packed this book is with information, though, and I do think it’s a great purchase for collectors or anyone who’s simply a huge ‘A Minecraft Movie’ fan.
It’s a well-designed and well-constructed hardcover book filled with vibrant graphics and color images, but there’s a digital Kindle version for those who’d prefer to read on their tablet or e-reader.
You can buy ‘A Minecraft Movie: From Block to Big Screen’ for $39.58 at Amazon now, if you’re interested.
‘A Minecraft Movie’ is streaming and on Blu-Ray now
“Minecraft is a game in which the players create their stories, and we wanted to keep that nature for the movie as well,” Bergensten told me. “We’re not telling the story about Steve, this is clearly a version of Steve, and a potential seed of Minecraft.”
I was cheekily asking about the potential for ‘A Minecraft Movie’ sequel, which, of course, we couldn’t talk about. I do hope it happens, though, even if it’ll likely be a year or two before we even hear anything.
I did learn about a cool detail I missed when watching the movie myself, however. “Even the opening shot of the movie, as people who have played Java for a while will recognize, there is a world generation graphic where you can see the seed is being initialized,” Ólaffson said. “So, the movie starts in the same way as when you create your own randomly procedurally generated world.”
Now’s the time to see it for yourself. ‘A Minecraft Movie’ absolutely dominated during its time in theaters worldwide, raking in over $900 million at the box office, but it’s finally heading to Video-on-Demand (VoD).
You can rent or buy ‘A Minecraft Movie’ now from $19.99 at Amazon, but if you’d like a physical copy, you can preorder that for $29.95 at Amazon, with a planned release date of June 24, 2025.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this final quote from Ólaffson:
“We’ve been really blown away by the success of the movie all over the world. It’s really rewarding for those who worked on it so hard, and had so much fun doing so, to see it bring people together and dig deep into the Overworld. It’s cool that now people can have it play on repeat in their house, with the release to VoD. So many unexpected things have happened, like the ‘Lava Chicken’ song hitting the charts. My kids who had seen early cuts kept singing that song, but I didn’t realize I’d be hearing people sing it all over the internet a few months later. Crazy!”
