Actor-musician Jack Black remains Hollywood's go-to guy for video game roles: he'll play Steve in the upcoming one Minecraft movie, according to reports from Deadline And Variety. Black joins actors Jason Momoa (Aquarius), Danielle Brooks (Peacemaker), and Emma Myers (Wednesday) in the live-action adaptation of Mojang's massive sandbox game.
Black, of course, starred in last year's multibillion-dollar adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. franchise as the voice of Bowser (and the crooner of “Peaches”), just one aspect of what made him the best thing about the series. The Super Mario Bros. Movie). Black also stars in the upcoming adaptation of Borderlands – he is Claptrap – and in two Jumanji films. All this underlines that Jack Black has a serious reputation as a gamer, thanks in no small part to his roles in Broken age, Psychonauts 2And Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2.
We don't know yet what the Minecraft film is about, with Deadline (worryingly) reporting that writing credits are “still being determined.” But we do know that director Jared Hess (Napoleon dynamite) is leading the project and will reunite with Black following their 2006 collaboration Nacho Libre.
A version of the Minecraft film has been in the making for almost a decade. Director Shawn Levy (Night in the museum) was attached to the film in its earliest stages. It's always sunny in Philadelphia Creator and star Rob McElhenney was the next to take a stab at making one MinecraftAdventure with taste in the style of a cult classic from 1985 The Goonies. Director Peter Sollett (The path) also tried, with a version about “a teenage girl and her unlikely group of adventurers” trying to save their blocky Overworld from an Ender Dragon. Hess came on board as director alongside Momoa in 2022, and it's not clear if the story has changed since Sollett's attempt.
Minecraft's Steve is the original default character avatar for the game, and has a female counterpart in Alex. Developer Mojang later added more characters in the form of Ari, Efe, Kai, Makena, Noor, Sunny and Zuri.
Warner Bros. and Legendary have the Minecraft film set on April 4, 2025. Production on the live-action projects is expected to begin “soon.”