With more than 144 million copies sold worldwide, Minecraft remains the second most popular video games of all time, still trailing behind the timeless puzzle game Tetris. Minecraft has already inspired a series of narrative spin-off games developed by Telltale Games, so it was easy to imagine that the massively popular sandbox game would make the transition to the big screen at some point.
Actually, a Minecraft film by Warner Bros. has been in development for some time, and it was expected to be released in May 2019. Unfortunately, the project now appears to have been delayed after some significant staff changes. According to a report from The Wrap (via Eurogamer), director Rob McElhenney and co-writer of the original script Jason Fuchs are out, and Warner Bros. has already found a new creative duo to replace them with Aaron and Adam Nee. The Nee brothers have previously worked on the crime comedy film Band of Robbers, which was released in 2015 to positive reviews.
Movie adaptations of popular video games are notoriously difficult to create, as it’s usually very hard for creative teams to please both hardcore fans and a more mainstream audience. We’ve seen plenty of disasters over the years, but the Angry Birds movie released two years ago (years after the series of video games peaked on mobile devices) did pretty well despite getting mixed reviews from critics. Do you think Minecraft deserves to have a movie adaptation, or do you think some games are not meant to transition to the big screen? Sound off in the comments below.