Warner Bros. has spent years trying to sort out a big movie adaptation of one of the biggest names in gaming: Minecraft. Last year plans were scuppered when Rob McElhenney departed the project—but now an intriguing choice has stepped up to both write and direct.
Variety reports that Peter Sollett—best known for comedy dramas Raising Victor Vargas and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist—has been tapped to both write and direct the Minecraft movie, with the game’s original studio Mojang still on board to produce. The film will apparently follow a young girl and a gang of her friends, as they go out exploring the blocky Overworld of their Minecraft existence to mine, craft, and fight a giant Elder Dragon threatening to burn everything they want to either mine or craft to cinders. It’s…what you’d expect out of a narrative-driven take on the beloved sandbox game, really.
It’s still kind of wild that it’s taken this long to get Minecraft off the ground; while its influence is still wide-reaching, it’s not hard to see it as past the true apex of its popularity, in an era where Fortnite (which itself has Minecraft-ian building elements, of course) has come to dominate the “what the kids are up to these days” discourse. But still, now that Sollett is on board, at least the angular wheels of the Minecraft movie minecart can start turning again, and this movie can actually maybe happen at some point.
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