Summary

A Minecraft Movie features misfit friends on a magical quest with humorous and skilled characters, appealing to kids and adults alike.

Director Hess and Minecraft guru and producer Ólafsson discuss practical set design, family-inspired storytelling, and humorous character dynamics.

The film is packed with Easter eggs and practical sets, providing an immersive experience even for non-Minecraft players.

Minecraft has been, pun intended, a building block in millions of people’s lives worldwide. Fans have grown up on the game, families have bonded over it, and friends have laughed uproariously as the ever-expanding world of Minecraft took over the planet. It was only a matter of time before the universe would be adapted for the silver screen. Now, the time has finally come, and the filmmakers behind A Minecraft Movie have a lot to share about their new film. Director Jared Hess, of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre fame, takes the helm alongside Minecraft creative genius and producer Torfi Frans Ólafsson, who is also heavily involved with the massively popular EVE Online. The mixture of these two creative brains with seriously wild senses of humor makes A Minecraft Movie an unexpected, off-the-wall treat for kids and adults alike.
A Minecraft Movie follows four misfit friends as they struggle with their everyday issues and worries, who find a mysterious portal to a bizarre, cubic playground and landscape that thrives on imagination. Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (newcomer Sebastian Hansen), Natalie (Wednesday’s Emma Myers) and Dawn (Peacemaker’s Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks) must master the world on a magical quest in order to get home, along the way learning the skills necessary to thrive back in the real world, with the help of the most awesome expert crafter within the world, Jack Black’s Steve.
Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the pleasure of chatting with Hess and Ólafsson about their feature interpretation. Together they discuss building practical sets for players’ favorite Minecraft locales, how laughter and family inspired the creation of the flick, and how fun it is to see big hunk Momoa get the crap kicked out of him time and time again.
‘A Minecraft Movie’ Celebrates What People Love About the Game

“I’d build some gnarly, sweet fort that looked like a 1980s Pizza Hut, and then my kids would destroy it.”

COLLIDER: Do you know how I know the studio believes in this movie hardcore? Because of this set. This costs money to build. I have done 1,000 junkets, and this is not the norm. This is a, pardon my language, fucking awesome set.
JARED HESS: It is, man. Game Over World. We got all these sweet Young Garrett magazine covers.
Is it in your contract to be able to take home 720? Because this game is impossible to play.
HESS: We’ve been watching it on loop this whole time, and I’m dying to play it.
TORFI FRANS ÓLAFSSON: I get super distracted in our interviews.
I’ve played this game. It’s very hard. Very hard. But enough about the set, which I could go on for the next 10 minutes. I want to start with congratulations.
HESS: Oh, thank you.
You did not crash the Ferrari.
HESS: Sweet! [Laughs]

Image via Warner Bros.

One of the challenges of a film like this is you need to entertain Minecraft players, you need to make a movie that entertains people who have never played the game, you need to make sure the studios are happy, and you need to make sure the people that own the IP are happy. So, how the hell did you do this?
HESS: It was a lot, man. At the end of the day, we just wanted to celebrate what we all love about the game. My kids started playing the game right when it came out. It was a big part of our family. We were always laughing when we played the game. I’d build some gnarly, sweet fort that looked like a 1980s Pizza Hut, and then my kids would destroy it and spawn, like, a million wolves in it. That’s kind of the spirit of Minecraft, and taking a bunch of unlikely underdogs, unlikely heroes, and throwing them on this epic quest, it was like, “Gosh, this is what it should be, and it should just be fun.”
It’s not even that, though. There are so many weird and offbeat jokes that I was laughing at, and I don’t understand how you were able to slip these things through.
HESS: At the end of the day, as we came up with the characters, so much of the comedy is just from them. It’s from who they are as people and how they’re navigating this world. We had a ton of fun. Look, Jason Momoa is the biggest hunk on planet Earth, and it was so fun to see him get the crap beaten out of him throughout the whole movie. It was something that he’s never done before, and his scream has me in stitches every time I hear it.
I could dig down on that for forever.

5:47

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There’s a Tribute to YouTuber Technoblade in ‘A Minecraft Movie’

The creatives reveal a handful of Easter eggs to keep an eye out for.

Image via Warner Bros.

A lot of people are going to want to know what some of the Easter eggs are that they maybe won’t see. Is there anything you want to tease people about, or let them know, “Watch this scene or watch that scene?”
HESS: One of my favorite Easter eggs came from Sebastian, who plays Henry. When we were prepping the film, he was like, “Look, there’s this amazing Minecraft player named Technoblade who passed away, and I would love to be able to honor him somehow in the film.” We were like, “Oh my goodness, of course.” So we spoke with our design team, and there’s a really, really sweet, special nod to Technoblade in the film that is really cool.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
ÓLAFSSON: There’s a lot of stuff that was hidden in the corners and in the back angles and places, like Steve’s stash in the village, and in the woodland mansion. It’s kind of frustrating when you know Minecraft, because our heroes are so bad at Minecraft because they have just entered the world—aside from Steve—that they completely overlook stuff that would help them finish the entire quest in, like, two minutes.
HESS: Yes! Like the Totem of Undying, which is basically an extra life in the game. One of them is sitting there, but they don’t know what any of it means or does. So, it was fun, again, to have all these incredible resources and different types of loot that could have totally helped them, but instead they’re just dorkin’ their way through all this awesome stuff.
Every Set In ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Was Crafted Practically

“They’re all the real deal.”

Image via Warner Bros.

ÓLAFSSON: It was also so frustrating. The production design team made so much cool stuff. They would make these different utility blocks that the villagers use, and the different props and different things. They’d be sitting in the corner of the frame, but then we had to cut the scene, or we had to trim it or something like that. So there’s a lot of stuff that was off-screen, just standing in that village set that our production design team built, then suddenly being inside a physical village. You may not realize it because there’s a lot of CG, but most of the stuff that’s in frame close to you…
HESS: Yeah, we built the sets. Everything from the Minecraft forest to Midport Village to the Woodland Mansion was all built. It was all practical. So, it was surreal coming on the set every day. We did set extensions for stuff that’s in the deeper background, but everything you see on screen was built.
ÓLAFSSON: And the villagers are all people. It was a huge challenge to find dancers in New Zealand. They were all 5’6” because they all had to be a certain height. They had these amazing, crafted, highly detailed costumes.
HESS: All the villagers’ costumes are real. We ended up making villager heads that we could animate. But yeah, they’re all the real deal, which was super fun.
A Minecraft Movie is in theaters now.

A Minecraft Movie

Release Date

April 4, 2025

Runtime

101 minutes

Director

Jared Hess

Writers

Chris Galletta, Gavin James, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Allison Schroeder, Chris Bowman

Producers

Jason Momoa, Jill Messick, Mary Parent, Roy Lee, Todd Hallowell, Cale Boyter, Jon Berg, Jon Spaihts, Brian Andrew Mendoza, Vu Bui, Lydia Winters